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this is my first year in this event and i was wondering how difficult the structures are. i am a builder, and my coach had me and my partner practice with a paper airplane. is that way to easy???

Yes.

Structures at almost all competitions I have attended have been composed of anywhere from 25-50 pieces of whatever the building material is. I remember one year at state is was something like 75 K'nex pieces. These are usually designed with the express intention that no one will finish, but that the writer's will be very rushed, so it is much easier to distinguish between places.

Usually not all connected in normal ways too. Ie, legos connected via one dot, so that the pieces act like a hinge or something.

This past week i was coaching WIDI for my team and i decided to go easy on them. I showed them the wiki and it seemed like they understood it. I then took a 10x10 lego piece and put 3 legos on it and had them write and build that. There was about 20 kids there and they all said "wow this is stupid, it's wayyy too easy!!" You know what? not one person built the exact same thing. I think we have a longggggg way to go

ok that helps alot!! thanks

Ok so i'm coaching this event and i have a question. How specific do they get? For example we've been practicing with these little coin connectors that make a coin structure. I'll get a picture some time. You basically insert the coins into the different sides of the connector. I know they will probably pay attention to heads/tails but do they pay attention to the angle of the coin? Like say the coin is rotated at a 45* angle.. do they mark it wrong if you dont put it at that angle? What about placement on the table? Do you have to place it in the same spot? I told my team yes for both of those but i want to know if i was right or not.

The problem with this event is that there are not any standards. Each event sup has different ideas of what is considered good enough for the point. It doesn't help any that you almost never see your scores either.

I'm assuming the following on the basis that you're using something like these.

Honestly, I doubt heads/tails will matter. I bet all that would matter is that everything is connected where it is supposed to be. As far as rotations go, yes, that probably would count, as does placement on the table. As in, if one part of the structure is 6 inches to the right of another part, it would be important to specify that and get the distance close to right.


But ,that's just how I would grade it. Each supervisor is very very different..

well the closer to the other person's the better. do you know that they're going to use those coin thingys? usually you can find out what they're going to be using ahead of time so you can practice with them.

what state are you in? they never tell us what they are going to use....

bob3443 wrote:well the closer to the other person's the better. do you know that they're going to use those coin thingys? usually you can find out what they're going to be using ahead of time so you can practice with them.

really my team never finds out until the competition
two year ago at state here in colorado the structre was built out of foam board thumbtacks and reeses penut butter holders.
me and my teemate had not praticed since we qualified to do the event at regionals unfortionatally rocks and minerals was at the same time so i did that event, i thought i did crappy in the building of the structer when they announced my team for silver medal i almost pigeon my pants.

do any of your regionals not allow u to touch the structer while writing. two years ago at regionals we were not allowed to touch the structer

computernerd4826 wrote:what state are you in? they never tell us what they are going to use....

i'm from NJ and i went on their website they had a small page for write-it-do-it and it said

Lego Building Blocks will be used as the materal for 2009 at all New Jersey Science Olympiad tournaments.

here's the website
http://njscienceolympiad.org/content/ev ... iteitdoit/