mrsteven wrote:However, if i can make the height of vehicle exceed 300cm in loaded position, it creates a negative value for that, lowering my score! Low score wins
Interesting thought.. but look at rule 3.f. a little more closely to see why this is prohibited.
Student Alumni
National Event Supervisor
National Physical Sciences Rules Committee Chair
I'm really hopIng my rules come in tuesday(they'd be a distraction any ealier ) could someone elaborate on the height bonus? I'm confused, is it a shorter ramp vs longer time trade off?
Our vehicles from last season were triggered by pulling a nail out from the underside of the ramp surfaces. The nails were positioned close to the top of the ramp and just in front of the rear axle. We used only one trigger point for the season on each ramp, and the highest point on the car was very close to 1 m above the floor.
I think one of our orders of business for this season, before even designing taller ramps, will be to add a couple more trigger points to one of last season's ramps, perhaps in 10 cm increments. Then we'll test the sum of height score and time score to see which height gives a lower sum for different run distances that span the possible range. With any luck, the minimum score for the sum of these two portions of the run score will always be at a height that is less than 1 m. If so, then we won't build new ramps for this season but rather add more trigger points to the second ramp instead.
Before doing any of this, we'll be making a couple of assumptions and calculating the minimum sum of height and time score as a function of height. Then testing on a modified ramp will be to confirm how good or poor our assumptions were. Gotta love Physics!
My ramp has wood sidings that prevent the vehicle from being seen if you are looking at the ramp from the side. Is this going to be a problem when the event supervisor tries to measure the height of my vehicle? I'm trying to think of an easy way to measure the height in my case but I can't think of one.
Faustina wrote:My ramp has wood sidings that prevent the vehicle from being seen if you are looking at the ramp from the side. Is this going to be a problem when the event supervisor tries to measure the height of my vehicle? I'm trying to think of an easy way to measure the height in my case but I can't think of one.
I think it would depend on how high the wooden sides are. Ideally it would be best if you removed the wooden sides.
Why do you need the sides anyhow?
If they wanted to. they could lay a meter stick over the top and measure down to the car. Ht of meter stick minus the down measurement gives the ht of the car.
also, you could rout a slot to run a stick thru and measure.
I think I'm going to make sure the event supervisors can measure the height of my vehicle accurately. It would be unfortunate if they measured it incorrectly because they can't access it.
) could someone elaborate on the height bonus? I'm confused, is it a shorter ramp vs longer time trade off?
