Next Years Events

[gneissisnice]

No, we had one of the kids on my own team that bragged about how his dad built his bridge for him.

Man, that's a terrible moral dilemma. Tell the judge (or your coach, or whatever) and get people angry at you, or do nothing and undermine your integrity and the integrity of the competition. That sucks.

Basically, we didnt have to do anything, since he also bragged to our coach, who wasnt happy. And anyway, we have a kid who's amazing at building them and did way better than the other kids dad anyway. So it all worked out.

[andrewwski]

The point is, you and your friends did it themselves, though you may have had privileges that others dont, but thats the way life works. We are saying that some kids dont do anything. Their parents build their bridges, or towers, or whatever, and the kids just watch, and thats wrong.

And when this happened did you talk to the coordinator for that competition? It seems like nothing more than a lot of speculation to me.

But what good will that do? You can't prove it. They can't be disqualified because it looks like their parents built the devices. Unless there's real evidence, which is next to impossible to get, you can't do a thing.

I don't think it's fair to say that just because something is complex, it was not student built. My stuff can be complex. I have a knack for electronics, most kids probably couldn't even figure out how my timer-relay circuit worked on EV. But I knew, and I could explain everything in a lot of detail.

It's not the complexity that is bothering. I love seeing incredibly complex and cool constructions. The bothering part is if parents or coaches are teaching the kids how to use it - regardless of whether or not it's a complex piece.

[gneissisnice]

Exactly. If a kid makes a brilliant device by himself, thats awesome. Theres no way of proving if he did or not, and some kids have their stuff done by their parents. Fortunately, the kids who have parent-built devices generally arent competitive enough to make the team, but I've seen a few kids on the B or C teams (A is varsity, B and C are JV) who have their parents build their stuff.

[Skystrider]

There is another obstacle to a rule against parent-builts. Occasionally, a student-built device is run at competition by a different student. Anyone familiar with the way a Science Olympiad competition is run should not be surprised by the reason for this. When event conflicts come up for a student, sometimes he needs to choose to attend one event rather than another. This can result in situations where the competing student has little idea how his device works. All he knows is that when you line it up and turn it on, it goes. I think that this is the reason that SO has avoided any rules that would actively discourage people from running devices made by other people.

[rocketman1555]

yeah, that would stink, i've had to do that before, and i had no clue what i was doing

[Pleiades]

Next year i'm going to have to have someone else enter my wright stuff, scrambler, and elevated bridge since i will have no open event blocks. What i might do is split up my event blocks. I might try to finish the first event in 30 minutes if possible and tell the people entering scrabler or wright stuff to stall as long as possible and then i will do a full sprint a half a mile across campus and fly the plane/run the scrambler myself then do another full sprint back to the written test building to make it on time for my next event. I probably wont have to do that for elevated bridge because it's not that hard to put a bridge on a table then pour sand in. My scrambler on the other hand is very complex. Wright stuff will also probably be a hard thing to have someone else enter for me with the trimming and such. Heck I dont really even know how to do that yet

[dudeincolorado]

umm i dont think you can do that event supervisors wont let you back in once you left. (supposedly you could tell the other team from you school or someone else the test and stuff trust me i could leave rocks beacus my partner had no idea what it was...im gonna stop)

[Pleiades]

But i wouldnt be leaving one event and going back to the same one... i'd be leaving one event.. going to the building event.. then going back to a different event at the start of the next event block

[dudeincolorado]

wow...thats a lot of events...how many blocks do you have? we have like 6 here

[Pleiades]

some teams have 6 while some have 5. last year my team had 5 but i hope we have 6 this year.