2020 Friendly Science Competition

[Things2do]

Since this thread has been proposed, but not created, I thought I would take the initiative and make it. Since this is a unofficial event, I don't feel that the General Competition area is a proper place for this. For previous discussions, which I expect will be reiterated below, see pages 16 through 24 here. If you have a better name, I'll change it. I just put that in as a placeholder.

This event is not affiliated, associated, authorized, endorsed by, or in any way officially connected with SOinc, or any of its subsidiaries or its affiliates. The events ran shall not infringe upon any copyrights, trademarks, or any other intellectual property rights of SOinc or any of its subsidiaries or its affiliates, and it shall comply with all of the relevant policies listed on SOinc.org. This event is not affiliated, associated, authorized, endorsed by, or in any way officially connected with the Science Olympiad Student Center, SciOly.org, or any of its subsidiaries or its affiliates. Those words or terms that the authors have reason to believe are trademarks are designated as such by the use of initial capitalization, where appropriate. However, no attempt has been made to identify or designate all words or terms to which trademark or other proprietary rights may exist. Nothing contained herein is intended to express a judgment on, or affect the validity of legal status of, any word or term as a trademark, service mark, or other proprietary mark.Yes, I copied some of that so I wouldn't have to type as much.

I agree with NadiaT; it is "inspiring to see [you] all come together for the sake of science" despite unfortunately having your state tournaments cancelled. However, I wouldn't want to see eager Science Olympiad students or Scioly.org in hot water from the national organization, so I advise you to plan carefully and reference these policies as needed. Thanks for your energy, passion, and flexibility.

This post includes advice that should be closely followed, specifically the careful planning and policy referencing bits..

[JasperKota]

For certain build events like ping pong parachute and Wright Stuff I think it'd be possible to have a virtual competition by sending in videos. At the beginning clearly show that the plane meets specs (measure the prop, wings, etc. show the weight on a scale), have no cuts, and clearly show the winding and launching process of both flights. I guess it'd be difficult to regulate ceiling height and whatnot but iirc that's how the AMA ran a virtual competition based around their Alpha plane kit a year or two ago.

[waterlubber]

For certain build events like ping pong parachute and Wright Stuff I think it'd be possible to have a virtual competition by sending in videos. At the beginning clearly show that the plane meets specs (measure the prop, wings, etc. show the weight on a scale), have no cuts, and clearly show the winding and launching process of both flights. I guess it'd be difficult to regulate ceiling height and whatnot but iirc that's how the AMA ran a virtual competition based around their Alpha plane kit a year or two ago.

We'll have to be a little more careful with stuff like PPP, as it's an event more unique to Science Olympiad than wright stuff (just a rubber band plane.)
I'm a little more worried about avoiding copyright (not that we're doing anything illegal -- this falls well within the bounds of fair use, it's just I'd like to avoid upsetting SOINC) than execution of events, which should be relatively trivial.

I'd like to request help from people experienced with these events for writing new rulesets for them independent of SO.
The requirements are, in priority order:
1. Must be independent from SO rules. Try to follow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design clean room design principles when making them, and don't have the SO rules up when you do make them. Pretty much all of the testing events are just generic STEM subjects, so those won't be problematic, but unique stuff like PPP or WIDI needs to get creative.
2. Keep it reverse compatible with the SO rules. This is hard to do with Restriction #1, but people do it all the time in the computer science world so it's definitely possible here. People should be able to re-use their builds and get similar results to what they would have gotten at states under ideal conditions.
3. Design the rules to work best online. Modifications to procedure are necessary to ensure integrity (although this is going to be based on the honor system anyway.) I think recorded videos of construction are nice, but the actual test runs should be done on livestream to ensure that they're only being done once.

If you have suggested rulesets please PM them to me or drop them in the discord here: https://discord.gg/pkYt4y7

I've got some new event names cooking that I will release tomorrow so we won't have to use the SO event names any more. (just to be safe, I don't think "Astronomy" is copyrighted ;P)

[JoeyC]

I like this idea, might be a pseudo-replacement to nats due to all the interruptions happening due to Covid-19.
Also: what if we called PPP Indoor Bottle Rocket?

[Things2do]

For certain build events like ping pong parachute and Wright Stuff I think it'd be possible to have a virtual competition by sending in videos. At the beginning clearly show that the plane meets specs (measure the prop, wings, etc. show the weight on a scale), have no cuts, and clearly show the winding and launching process of both flights. I guess it'd be difficult to regulate ceiling height and whatnot but iirc that's how the AMA ran a virtual competition based around their Alpha plane kit a year or two ago.

I would question the majority if the build events, not because of the feasibility of running them, but because of how specific the "event requirements" would have to be. I understand how much time, effort, and money has been spent on devices, but it would most likely be a infringement on the SOinc Rules copyrights to make it so that people could use their existing devices. There are enough balsa building things around that we could probably get away with a wooden cantilever event with different scoring and building requirements, but I feel that specialized events like planes and light-descent projectile rockets would be better for those with enough money to build new devices to our specs. If we were to have broad specs that would allow for existing devices from other organizations, I'm afraid that some teams would still spend more money to exploit our requirements to their benefit.

[JasperKota]

I would question the majority if the build events, not because of the feasibility of running them, but because of how specific the "event requirements" would have to be. I understand how much time, effort, and money has been spent on devices, but it would most likely be a infringement on the SOinc Rules copyrights to make it so that people could use their existing devices. There are enough balsa building things around that we could probably get away with a wooden cantilever event with different scoring and building requirements, but I feel that specialized events like planes and light-descent projectile rockets would be better for those with enough money to build new devices to our specs. If we were to have broad specs that would allow for existing devices from other organizations, I'm afraid that some teams would still spend more money to exploit our requirements to their benefit.

I'm not familiar with the copyright issues but I mostly just want some comparison of how my builds would do when against the rest of my state. Nothing is coming out of this "competition," no official medals or awards are being given. People record practice flights and upload them to Youtube all the time so I don't see why having multiple people do this individually and then comparing them would not be allowed. If the issue is having it under the name of a science "competition" I'd be more than happy to just create a public Youtube playlist and have people pm me their submissions to add their videos, and have it be a separate thing -- not correlated with this virtual competition running other events.

[Things2do]

I would question the majority if the build events, not because of the feasibility of running them, but because of how specific the "event requirements" would have to be. I understand how much time, effort, and money has been spent on devices, but it would most likely be a infringement on the SOinc Rules copyrights to make it so that people could use their existing devices. There are enough balsa building things around that we could probably get away with a wooden cantilever event with different scoring and building requirements, but I feel that specialized events like planes and light-descent projectile rockets would be better for those with enough money to build new devices to our specs. If we were to have broad specs that would allow for existing devices from other organizations, I'm afraid that some teams would still spend more money to exploit our requirements to their benefit.

I'm not familiar with the copyright issues but I mostly just want some comparison of how my builds would do when against the rest of my state. Nothing is coming out of this "competition," no official medals or awards are being given. People record practice flights and upload them to Youtube all the time so I don't see why having multiple people do this individually and then comparing them would not be allowed. If the issue is having it under the name of a science "competition" I'd be more than happy to just create a public Youtube playlist and have people pm me their submissions to add their videos.

I hadn't thought of that... If there was a compilation of build event practices that were all a certain distance or whatever with no mention of competing, that might work. Otherwise, I can think of a lot of YouTube videos that should be pulled. Including including the majority of my channel...

[SentientJello]

Out of curiosity, how formal would this be? Could entire schools (with their 6 teams) enter into this competition?

[Things2do]

Out of curiosity, how formal would this be? Could entire schools (with their 6 teams) enter into this competition?

I just sorta invited myself into this, so don't hold me to this, but I would assume that any teams/individuals could compete. Probably having the team(s) that would have been at the State competition designated as such to differentiate in the scores, and maybe have a "team" or designation for those individuals that want to see how they would've done at State, even if their team chooses not to participate in this.

[sciolyperson1]

For certain build events like ping pong parachute and Wright Stuff I think it'd be possible to have a virtual competition by sending in videos. At the beginning clearly show that the plane meets specs (measure the prop, wings, etc. show the weight on a scale), have no cuts, and clearly show the winding and launching process of both flights. I guess it'd be difficult to regulate ceiling height and whatnot but iirc that's how the AMA ran a virtual competition based around their Alpha plane kit a year or two ago.

If it were me, I wouldn't send vids/pics of my builds on the internet lol