New York 2011

[zyzzyva980]

Why wouldn't they be?

[FueL]

Oh, now I know why you just asked me about that on Facebook. I thought you were planning on coming over on Sunday.
No, Sundays are the one day of the week that Gelinas never meets. Though according to one of our math teachers, we meet eight days a week. xD
By every day I meant weekdays, and I was referring to teams in general, not the Gelinas team.

Yes indeed. No, I'm coming over tomorrow. My school only meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but our practices are usually very productive (well, as productive as middle schoolers can be).

[personasaurus rex]

Oh, now I know why you just asked me about that on Facebook.

You shouldn't have a Facebook in the first place ;]

[HappySciencePie]

Oh, now I know why you just asked me about that on Facebook.

You shouldn't have a Facebook in the first place ;]

Shhhh! It's cool. I'm over 13. 8D

Our practices.. usually aren't very productive until about 1-2 weeks before competition, maybe 3.

[Cheese_Muffin_Man]

Why wouldn't they be?

Just a thought.

[HappySciencePie]

You could have just a couple of kids meet and work on their events without their coaches too, depending on the event. If that counts as meeting. I know that one of our Bottle Rocket guys slept over his partner's house for two days to build a rocket at the last minute. They named it Excalibur. Apparently it failed epically.

[Tramsarran]

My team built a bottle rocket very soon before the state competition and had never tested it at all. One person built it and had used super glue which lead to a construction violation as it interfered with the chemical composition of the plastic but we were allowed to launch anyway as the person who was in charge of the event decided to take the risk. We never ever tested the rocket before the state competition thus it failed epically. The nose was so wide that the drag stopped the rockets at about 15 feet in the air and I don't think any of them stayed in the air past 5 seconds. I don't know anywhere to legally test the Bottle Rockets next year because my team and I reside in Queens where we would get arrested for shooting the rocket off in most places.

[gneissisnice]

My team built a bottle rocket very soon before the state competition and had never tested it at all. One person built it and had used super glue which lead to a construction violation as it interfered with the chemical composition of the plastic but we were allowed to launch anyway as the person who was in charge of the event decided to take the risk. We never ever tested the rocket before the state competition thus it failed epically. The nose was so wide that the drag stopped the rockets at about 15 feet in the air and I don't think any of them stayed in the air past 5 seconds. I don't know anywhere to legally test the Bottle Rockets next year because my team and I reside in Queens where we would get arrested for shooting the rocket off in most places.

Yeah, I think Bottle Rocket is an awful event for a few reasons:

1) it's weather dependent. A gust of wind can hurt or help any team (depending if it boosts it up or down), and if it rains during the competition...well, sucks to be you.

2) Not every team can test it outdoors. Like you said, you live in an area where you can't launch it. That's a problem.

3) At states, the winning time was 25 seconds. In my opinion, any event where a 1st place score is 25 seconds is a poorly designed event, because with such a short time, the distribution of scores ends up being really close, and that's not a very good event. Something like planes, with a winning time of, say, 3 minutes, is better because that doesn't mean that half the teams have the same time like you get in Bottle Rockets.

[Primate]

My team built a bottle rocket very soon before the state competition and had never tested it at all. One person built it and had used super glue which lead to a construction violation as it interfered with the chemical composition of the plastic but we were allowed to launch anyway as the person who was in charge of the event decided to take the risk. We never ever tested the rocket before the state competition thus it failed epically. The nose was so wide that the drag stopped the rockets at about 15 feet in the air and I don't think any of them stayed in the air past 5 seconds. I don't know anywhere to legally test the Bottle Rockets next year because my team and I reside in Queens where we would get arrested for shooting the rocket off in most places.

Yeah, I think Bottle Rocket is an awful event for a few reasons:

1) it's weather dependent. A gust of wind can hurt or help any team (depending if it boosts it up or down), and if it rains during the competition...well, sucks to be you.

2) Not every team can test it outdoors. Like you said, you live in an area where you can't launch it. That's a problem.

3) At states, the winning time was 25 seconds. In my opinion, any event where a 1st place score is 25 seconds is a poorly designed event, because with such a short time, the distribution of scores ends up being really close, and that's not a very good event. Something like planes, with a winning time of, say, 3 minutes, is better because that doesn't mean that half the teams have the same time like you get in Bottle Rockets.

Yeah, last year at the NY state competition, one team won Egg-O-Naut with an absolutely ridiculous time of 5+ minutes. I bet all of the top five had rockets capable of such a flight, but the winners just happened to catch the wind.

But at the same time, I really like the event. You don't see high-speed aerodynamics applied anywhere else in scioly.

[personasaurus rex]

Yeah, I think Bottle Rocket is an awful event for a few reasons:

1) it's weather dependent. A gust of wind can hurt or help any team (depending if it boosts it up or down), and if it rains during the competition...well, sucks to be you.

2) Not every team can test it outdoors. Like you said, you live in an area where you can't launch it. That's a problem.

3) At states, the winning time was 25 seconds. In my opinion, any event where a 1st place score is 25 seconds is a poorly designed event, because with such a short time, the distribution of scores ends up being really close, and that's not a very good event. Something like planes, with a winning time of, say, 3 minutes, is better because that doesn't mean that half the teams have the same time like you get in Bottle Rockets.

don't even get me started on bottle rocket. Our bottle kids worked SO HARD on it and they built it so that it would glide down parallel to the ground slowly, and we were testing amazing times before the competition. We get to West Point, and naturally, it's windy near the river there, and it goes up, starts gliding down perfectly, then the wind comes and BOOM it nosedives. =/