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you should have the ruler built into the device. if you have to hold a ruler to measure the weight it will not be autonomous

If you do go with a ruler that is fixed onto your device, don't try to make it yourself. There are many ways for calibrations to be off when you mark them by yourself. That, and the required/supplied/mystery material(s), can separate you from first and fifth, or something to that effect.

jazzy009 wrote:you should have the ruler built into the device. if you have to hold a ruler to measure the weight it will not be autonomous

I think you could be wrong about using a ruler (maybe a graph or whatever) that is separate from the device. According to the official rules (at http://soinc.org/sites/default/files/up ... 009Tip.pdf )

f. Students may not simply estimate the mass of the Challenge Object by visual inspection or guessing.
Tables, graphs and calculators may be used to interpret the AD’s mass reading, but the AD itself may not be
touched after timing begins.

Competitors would use tables/graphs/calculators (and maybe a 'ruler') to interpret their results on Tipping the Scales.

Tables, graphs and calculators are not really the same thing as a ruler. The former interpret the result of your autonomous device; with the latter, there is no result until you go in and measure. I would think that using a ruler would count as a touch, at the least. Without a built-in scale of some kind, the device isn't actually doing anything.

in a spring scale, we attached a ruler, read it without touching it, and then punched the numbers into a calculator that had a calibrated linear regression line on it. 10 seconds. not too bad.

thanks a lot for all of your help....I won FIRST place!!!! THANK YOU- this forum helped a lot...coz before i visited this place i dint even know wht science olympiad was...so thanks all of you who answered my questions!!!

Ready to build my coin sorter

call4angel wrote:thanks a lot for all of your help....I won FIRST place!!!! THANK YOU- this forum helped a lot...coz before i visited this place i dint even know wht science olympiad was...so thanks all of you who answered my questions!!!

Ready to build my coin sorter

Congrats .

Are you allowed to use a multimeter to interpret data?

haha! excellent. yes as long as you create it autonomously it is legal. we have tried the same what part of the multimeter are you using?

We are measuring amperes.