Science Olympiad at Penn Invitational 2020

[ET2020]

I heard that they are canceling gravity vehicle scores because they announced the wrong distance

Where did u hear the info from

The tournament sent a message to the coaches.

[Lorant]

Big oof. I thought it was off on the 2nd timeblock, when I went but they said it was correct so I thought nothing of it until now.

[sdececco]

I heard a lot of chatter about it around the campus

[terence.tan]

Where are final results going to be?

[SluffAndRuff]

[deleted] scoring issue

[MacintoshJosh]

Tentative Results:
1. Boca Raton Community High School (185)
2. Liberal Arts and Science Academy (221)
3. Adlai E Stevenson High School (235)
4. West Windsor Plainsboro High School North (286)
5. Ward Melville High School (290)
6. Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (292)

[terence.tan]

From Penn (email to coaches):

Hello,

Unfortunately, due to a measurement error the target distance was incorrectly announced for Gravity Vehicle. The same error was made on both tracks. After the error was discovered, we did not announce it to the remaining teams in hopes of being as fair as possible under the circumstances. Too many teams had already competed to be able to run all cars again. We deeply regret this mistake and hope teams still benefited from the chance to run their vehicles under competition conditions.

We will still award medals for the event but will drop the score for this event from the overall team rankings. We are very sorry this happened and appreciate the professionalism coaches and competitors demonstrated in response to this error.

Best,
SOUP Executive Board

does anyone know what was the actual distance?

[dragonfruit35]

From Penn (email to coaches):

Hello,

Unfortunately, due to a measurement error the target distance was incorrectly announced for Gravity Vehicle. The same error was made on both tracks. After the error was discovered, we did not announce it to the remaining teams in hopes of being as fair as possible under the circumstances. Too many teams had already competed to be able to run all cars again. We deeply regret this mistake and hope teams still benefited from the chance to run their vehicles under competition conditions.

We will still award medals for the event but will drop the score for this event from the overall team rankings. We are very sorry this happened and appreciate the professionalism coaches and competitors demonstrated in response to this error.

Best,
SOUP Executive Board

does anyone know what was the actual distance?

11.65m, we ended up measuring it. Also, we might have been wrong but it seemed like the start line was crooked based on our measurements...

[terence.tan]

ha ha. I was exactly 50cm short of the target on my first run. thats a big yeet

[sciolyperson1]

ha ha. I was exactly 50cm short of the target on my first run. thats a big yeet

We measured 11.67 (distance was 11.15), it was a bit more than 50 cm. (I used the back track).

Just also wanted to add that the starting perpendicular line was very skewed. Overall not a great experience