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^Definitely, I would rather have the anchor point being the top of the mass (the top of the eyebolt). If not, then the anchor point should be at the bottom of the bottle. At nationals, it was neither. The anchor point was 21 cm above the bottom of the bottom (and the bottle height was 29 cm).

Also, they really need to limit the drop heights from 10m to around 5m. Although they had enough room at nationals to go up to 10m if needed, they only stayed within the 5-6m range (which surprised me). However, some teams do not have access to 10m at home or at school. Sure, they could go to some high-rise office building, some would say. But they're forgetting the fact that we're dropping up to 300 grams from 10 METERS (which would be approaching the ground at about 14 m/s or 30 mph!). One word: LIABILITY. This can easily hurt someone and no company wants to be in a position of a lawsuit due to an injury. Some teams would have access to these kind of heights at school (I met one school whose school went up to 9.5m) or at their house (a 3-4 story house?) or be lucky enough to have permission to test at their apartment. However, other teams would not be able to do the same and would be at a great disadvantage.

I really think they need to limit the heights to 5m at nationals for next year (which can be reached from a 2 story house or school).

it would be nice if they changed the rules so it required more designing instead of just massive amounts of testing. I mean I have no idea how you would do that with bungee but it would be nice cause I mean with thermo you needed a solid design AND a lot of data. For bungee its more like just make something that wont fatigue very fast and that you can switch out and then collect tons of data.

BTW chinesesushi I hope to see you again next year! Also thanks for everything!

I disagree that changing the event to focus more on design is important. I know teams with less resources can still have bright students who are able to independently create inexpensive successful devices. However, teams with more money and coaches are still at a distinct advantage in many building events. I don't think it is necessary to overhaul the building events entirely to prevent this, but it is nice that this particular event seems focused mostly on data collection and practice. Plenty of events focus on design already. Having the most expensive materials or having a coach with design experience and fancy power tools are not much of an advantage in this case, and that should be a good thing.

So is anyone doing this mathematically this year or is it still trial and error? We struggled last year with this event and are trying to find the best route.

I'd like the event to be a bit more complicated in terms of the number of rules and possible ways to get points. Sure, its nice to push teams to get their device to hit the ground the closest, but what if there were bonuses for not using certain materials? E.g. helicopter rubber or something. What if we factored in the total time it took for the elastic cord to stop moving (forces attain equilibrium)? I think the event would look a lot more interesting if there were more avenues to gain points.

Also, let's get rid of the average condition. I hated to see my team place so low at nationals, even though our second drop was amazing. It would be nice if the "best run" counted, like almost every other building event, instead of the average.

tanuagg13 wrote:I'd like the event to be a bit more complicated in terms of the number of rules and possible ways to get points. Sure, its nice to push teams to get their device to hit the ground the closest, but what if there were bonuses for not using certain materials? E.g. helicopter rubber or something. What if we factored in the total time it took for the elastic cord to stop moving (forces attain equilibrium)? I think the event would look a lot more interesting if there were more avenues to gain points.

Also, let's get rid of the average condition. I hated to see my team place so low at nationals, even though our second drop was amazing. It would be nice if the "best run" counted, like almost every other building event, instead of the average.

Why would you limit the materials? Or. more specifically, why would you give bonuses for using a specific material over another?
I don't understand why this would be important in an event designed to test scientific process and experimentation (basically trial and error). Also, this is essentially the elasticity tiebreaker but backwards.
The event would be more interesting but there should be a valid backing to the new avenue to gain points, not just random ideas thrown out.
Then your team shouldn't be trying to change the event, but be trying to find out how to get the "amazing" second drop to the 1st drop.

My suggestion has nothing to do with my team's wishes. I was just commenting from my observations of the event at nationals (the event was never held at my state).
I suggested rewards for not using things like helicopter rubber because it would allow a huge variety of devices seen at nationals. It may not be the best way to induce device variety, but it's just a suggestion I threw out there.
I agree that the trial and error bit is the main focus of the event, but I do think it would be nice if the event weren't simply just based on how nicely you can calibrate your device. I think the event next year should incorporate some sort of boundless optimization. For example, scrambler also has a component where you want the device to get as close as possible to a target (mimicking Bungee Drop), but there's also the factor of speed, a boundless (within the constraints of physics) factor for optimization.