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I just noticed that my beakers were different...is there a chance that the ES in regional is going to be lenient or careless about beakers being different?

retired1 wrote:I hope that the rules committee for 2014 will be a little more specific.

According to the summer institute schedule (current as of 2/14), it doesn't look like Keep the Heat or Thermodynamics will be events next year. It appears that they will be replaced by Simple/Complex Machines, unless plans change between now and the summer.

What are the chances that they change it again, since if you look here http://soinc.org/sites/default/files/up ... -22-12.pdf , they decided to change Thermo rather recently .

ychen428 wrote:What are the chances that they change it again, since if you look here http://soinc.org/sites/default/files/up ... -22-12.pdf , they decided to change Thermo rather recently .

I don't know the status of things this year (or whether it's even worth it to speculate), but the schedule that was posted last year on 2/21/12 turned out to be the final event slate for 2012-2013.

ychen428 wrote:What are the chances that they change it again, since if you look here http://soinc.org/sites/default/files/up ... -22-12.pdf , they decided to change Thermo rather recently .

Furthermore, the older agenda from which it changed was posted all the way back in August, so it was never a very definitive source on probable events. In addition, physics events usually only run for two years, so it is unlikely for it to repeat for a third.

sjwon3789 wrote:I just noticed that my beakers were different...is there a chance that the ES in regional is going to be lenient or careless about beakers being different?

Yes, there is always a chance the ES will overlook something; however, it is a risk you probably should not take. Ideally the event supervisor should strictly enforce the identicalness of the beakers lest a team gain an advantage by having their external beaker cool more.

sjwon3789 wrote:I just noticed that my beakers were different...is there a chance that the ES in regional is going to be lenient or careless about beakers being different?

This happened to me where one beaker was Pyrex, and one was Kimex, and they were actually different dimensions. The supervisors didn't mind at all.

We had a team DQ'd at state last year because Cat C required that they be identical. We were going by div B rules and overlooked the difference. That is what you get for not reading the rules over and over with a fine tooth comb.
All of thermos jugs met div C rules.

Why not 4 pts deduction? Wouldn't it just be Competition section requirement violation or were the rules different last year?

The ES didn't notice it

chalker wrote:Regarding impounding the calculators, I thought it'd be helpful to publicly post some thoughts I've already privately provided to various people. Please note all of this is of course just my opinion and not the official position of SO:

Thanks for the clarification. I agree the rules only called out goggles as the exception, so it makes sense calculators should be impounded.

Zuul wrote:I agree the rules only called out goggles as the exception, so it makes sense calculators should be impounded.

I think that the debate was not necessarily what the rules say, but rather the merits of what the rules say (specifically, the merits of excluding only goggles, not calculators, from impound in the rules).