Junkyard Challenge C

[DeltaHat]

As long as the device has a single point of activation, then it is autonomous. Removing a pin is a single point of activation.

Or, to put it in far more abstract terms:

A device is autonomous if it is designed to transition from a starting state to an ending state without human intervention.

As a counter example, a pan balance is not autonomous because it will never transition from its starting state (unbalanced) to its ending state (balanced) without human interaction (adding or subtracting weights).

I hope this clarifies things a bit.

[jazzy009]

this does, thanks

[jazzy009]

are we allowed to use tape on our model? the rules are really confusing... what are the required materials?

[Jazzy09]

today me and jazzy009 got third at our conference meet in junkyard challenge, but it was run horribly. the event coordinator didnt know the rules so kids had stuff sticking out of their boxes and kids left the room multiple times to get materials and every team was given a different object with a different mass to weigh

[captbilly]

Has anyone ever done this event before? How accurately were/are people measuring the mass of the Challange object? Are we talking within a few grams or a few milligrams error? Are the event coordinators having to use the tie breakers for the coin sorting event or is nobody actually correctly sorting the coins? I am really not at all sure I understand how this event really works. Why do you need to build anything at the competition? It would seem that you can build your scale and coin sorter in advance. I don't really understand the "mystery material". How can you find a "necessary" use for a material that you do not have any idea about in advance. Suppose the judge gives you a cup of water, how do you modify the device to use a cup of water for a necessary purpose. It really seems to me that this event may often boil down to a team being lucky enough that their design can incorporate the mystery material, or not, but may be I don't get it.

[binary010101]

The Mystery Material could, for example, be used to extend something that swings so that it can hit something to continue the operation of the device.

[Flavorflav]

Has anyone ever done this event before? How accurately were/are people measuring the mass of the Challange object? Are we talking within a few grams or a few milligrams error? Are the event coordinators having to use the tie breakers for the coin sorting event or is nobody actually correctly sorting the coins? I am really not at all sure I understand how this event really works. Why do you need to build anything at the competition? It would seem that you can build your scale and coin sorter in advance. I don't really understand the "mystery material". How can you find a "necessary" use for a material that you do not have any idea about in advance. Suppose the judge gives you a cup of water, how do you modify the device to use a cup of water for a necessary purpose. It really seems to me that this event may often boil down to a team being lucky enough that their design can incorporate the mystery material, or not, but may be I don't get it.

I agree in part. I think the Mystery Material totally kills this event, but I think the basic idea of bringing a box of parts that you can assemble to perform either of two specified tasks is an interesting one. It's a shame they added the Mystery Material - it's not like it's too simple without it, after all.

[bearasauras]

The idea of Junkyard Challenge is to think outside the box and being able to make adjustments on the spot. You're right about teams being able to bring 2 completely built devices, 1 for each challenge. But of course, that doesn't allow the team to demonstrate their ability to build and adjust on the fly. The mystery item requires teams to incorporate into or even take apart their prebuild device(s) so that the students are able to demonstrate their abilities to think outside the box.

[captbilly]

Look, I guess the event is what it is and there is no reason to whine about rules that are not going to be changed before next year, I just want to be sure I even understand what the event is. When I gave my example about the event coordinator picking a glass of water as the mystery material I was just wondering if there is any limit on what the mystery material could be. Could you get a 9 volt battery or a bucket of sand, or some silly putty, or even a banana, or is there some limit on what you have to plan for?

I could see how you may be able to incorporporate a range of mystery materials, but it would seem that there would have to be limits. I can even see how this could work with unlimited choices of mystery material if everyone had the same set of starting materials and tools, but if everyone brings in something different to the event then it may well to be largely chance that your design happens to be able to incorporate the mystery material while someone esle cannot.

[jazzy009]

There isn't a boundary for the mystery object according to the rules, however, I would like to assume instructors are intelligent enough to incorporate reasonable objects. I would agree a glass of water would be an incredibly difficult challenge (that is the name of the event, i suppose), but that would take a lot of teams immediately off of tier 1...4 tiers for this event. Wow.

Now, having said that, at my first and only experience with this event, our mystery object was a large bolt. Not too hard to incorporate if you've done your building well and used a lot of interchangeable parts. By large I mean about 10 grams.