New Jersey 2010

[SOninja]

full tournament results are up http://www.njscienceolympiad.org/conten ... esults.pdf

[Blackkitty]

Yay we placed 16th which is good for us!

[fanjiatian]

Wow that's incredible for div B!
what team are you on?
good job & welcome to scioly!

HI. I"m from Montgomery in Division B. My bridge did well in practice, but failed in competition. I chose a light piece of wood that happened to be very weak. I spent a long time building my bridge with my dad. We carefully cut, glued and sanded the wood. We even weighed the pieces of wood to find the lightest piece. In practice, i got as high as 1200. But, in competition, we got four hundred something. That's disappointing, but I learned a lesson. But, I learned a lesson. lighter isn't always better. Sanding too much is also bad. Next time, I will try using medium density balsa wood, or practice loading quicker. I will also be conservative while sanding. I can't help but think that we could have easily beat mt. hebron had I chosen a stronger piece of wood. But, wood is an organic product. It's unpredictable and not uniform in quality. this is what makes building hard. It's not linear like taking a test.
By the way, which team are you on? Montgomery?

[new horizon]

depends where your bridge failed.
(not a bridge person but putting this into other building events)
You don't want to make large changes to your building events right before the competition, if you want to test something (like sanding a lot) do it way beforehand, so you know what you're getting into.
Our buggy had a good time score (not really ideal but good enough), it's solvable by changing your gear ratio. it doesn't mean that I should be changing gear ratios the day or week before. That's unfortunately not something you do because you don't know the effects of your actions. Next time you want to change something on your building event you should at least give yourself a little more time to test, but remember that consistency is always key.
Good luck on your future competition

[fanjiatian]

depends where your bridge failed.
(not a bridge person but putting this into other building events)
You don't want to make large changes to your building events right before the competition, if you want to test something (like sanding a lot) do it way beforehand, so you know what you're getting into.
Our buggy had a good time score (not really ideal but good enough), it's solvable by changing your gear ratio. it doesn't mean that I should be changing gear ratios the day or week before. That's unfortunately not something you do because you don't know the effects of your actions. Next time you want to change something on your building event you should at least give yourself a little more time to test, but remember that consistency is always key.
Good luck on your future competition

Thanks I'll keep that in mind. I hope we go to nationals as a second place state team.
You too!
By the way, what did you get in Battery Buggy? My teammates used a wingnut that completed a circuit until it reached the finish line. we got 1st.

[sewforlife]

Wow that's incredible for div B!
what team are you on?
good job & welcome to scioly!

HI. I"m from Montgomery in Division B. My bridge did well in practice, but failed in competition. I chose a light piece of wood that happened to be very weak. I spent a long time building my bridge with my dad. We carefully cut, glued and sanded the wood. We even weighed the pieces of wood to find the lightest piece. In practice, i got as high as 1200. But, in competition, we got four hundred something. That's disappointing, but I learned a lesson. But, I learned a lesson. lighter isn't always better. Sanding too much is also bad. Next time, I will try using medium density balsa wood, or practice loading quicker. I will also be conservative while sanding. I can't help but think that we could have easily beat mt. hebron had I chosen a stronger piece of wood. But, wood is an organic product. It's unpredictable and not uniform in quality. this is what makes building hard. It's not linear like taking a test.
By the way, which team are you on? Montgomery?

you might want to move this to the Bridge Thread, they are really helpful. And also, wat new horizon said, that you should try being consistent. There are also a lot of factors besides "lightness" and how "heavy" the wood is. sanding isn't always something you have to have either, messes up the joints

[fanjiatian]

im from MHMS and yeah the bridge was built like the week before and only weighed 14.33
The funny thing was that my dad doesn't believe in sanding and he said not to sand it . But, I sanded and baked it down to 14.33 from 14.7
HAHAH into his face thanks to me we got first
Are any of you from Community? Thats who we beat out. What was their design like?

Their design is sort of like mine. It has two triangular legs. I don't really remember anything else. It's really simple from the front view, but they have a lot of bracings. They had like ten bracings. If they didn't have a lot of bracings, their bridge would have been a lot lighter. My bridge was 9.68 grams. It could have done a lot better though. In practice, i got 1200 efficiency, but at competition i got around 400. I learned my lesson. I shouldn't sand too much or pick pieces of wood that are very light.

[soobsession]

im from MHMS and yeah the bridge was built like the week before and only weighed 14.33
The funny thing was that my dad doesn't believe in sanding and he said not to sand it . But, I sanded and baked it down to 14.33 from 14.7
HAHAH into his face thanks to me we got first
Are any of you from Community? Thats who we beat out. What was their design like?

Their design is sort of like mine. It has two triangular legs. I don't really remember anything else. It's really simple from the front view, but they have a lot of bracings. They had like ten bracings. If they didn't have a lot of bracings, their bridge would have been a lot lighter. My bridge was 9.68 grams. It could have done a lot better though. In practice, i got 1200 efficiency, but at competition i got around 400. I learned my lesson. I shouldn't sand too much or pick pieces of wood that are very light.

it'd be cool if you guys moved this discussion to the bridge thread.

in the meantime, what do you think of the results? some of the placings were a bit unexpected...

[fanjiatian]

im from MHMS and yeah the bridge was built like the week before and only weighed 14.33
The funny thing was that my dad doesn't believe in sanding and he said not to sand it . But, I sanded and baked it down to 14.33 from 14.7
HAHAH into his face thanks to me we got first
Are any of you from Community? Thats who we beat out. What was their design like?

Their design is sort of like mine. It has two triangular legs. I don't really remember anything else. It's really simple from the front view, but they have a lot of bracings. They had like ten bracings. If they didn't have a lot of bracings, their bridge would have been a lot lighter. My bridge was 9.68 grams. It could have done a lot better though. In practice, i got 1200 efficiency, but at competition i got around 400. I learned my lesson. I shouldn't sand too much or pick pieces of wood that are very light.

it'd be cool if you guys moved this discussion to the bridge thread.

in the meantime, what do you think of the results? some of the placings were a bit unexpected...

I'm disappointed with the fact that my bridge did a lot worse than in practice, however I can fix that problem next time.
I'm happy that Community improved their design. I expected to improve their design, I just didn't expect that my bridge would do as bad as it did. Well, there's no point in sulking. I can't stop laughing when I think about Mt. Hebron, since they beat Community by ONE single efficiency point. Imagine how mad Community is....

[sewforlife]

especially when they laughed at some many other people's bridges. now, we laugh in their face. when I was over at the efficiency scoreboard, they were all like, FIRST PLACE. and then we took out our calculators when they left. and it turns out they actually lost by 1.6 points.