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I do not think that it is in keeping with the spirit of the event to require calculus.

Agreed, but there should be problems where calculus would get you a quicker answer, but it should not be necessary.

Yeah I had a tournament today, and did really badly, especially in this event. Does anybody have any tips on improving/practicing this event?
Any help or advice would be appreciated.

Technical Problem Solving (at least, by my knowledge of two invitationals) is a combination of high level Chemistry and Physics-related math, as well as a commercial for Texas Instruments (analyzing data from a TI-81 Calculator attachment, ect.).

Competed in this on Saturday. It seemed ridiculously easy, but we ended up getting 14th. Since there are no specifics on scoring, I'd imagine it was all very close at the top because there was nothing complicated involved. Some things we had to calculate: Density, gravitational acceleration using a pendulum, average weight of candy, volume change in gas at different temperatures, and something else I don't remember

Can you tell me about the volume of gas station? I didn't get a very clear understanding of it from the guys who did it.

You just had to squeeze out some water from a sealed bottle into a graduated cylinder and calculate how much air entered the bottle. There was a thermometer reading air temp and one reading the water temp. You then just used (V1/T1)=(V2/T2). At least I think that that is how it was supposed to be done

ahage16 wrote:Competed in this on Saturday. It seemed ridiculously easy, but we ended up getting 14th. Since there are no specifics on scoring, I'd imagine it was all very close at the top because there was nothing complicated involved. Some things we had to calculate: Density, gravitational acceleration using a pendulum, average weight of candy, volume change in gas at different temperatures, and something else I don't remember

And mass of a cylinder of wood cut out of a block

Does anybody else think this event should be modified? Like using less calc?