ATOT weekly Engineering and Creative Challenge WEEK 3 POLL UP

[Freshgeardude]

you get more points for the more supply you use

 

[DrPizza]

Originally posted by: Freshgeardude
you get more points for the more supply you use

And, since you're multiplying by the bridge length, the longer the bridge, the more points too. So, if it's the lowest points wins,

ohhhhh, I see now. I thought those were dashes, not minus points.



Sounds good to me; we just have to hash out a few other rules - is there a minimum length to qualify? What units do we use when multiplying by the length? (cm or inches)? (edit: just for the sake of submission as this wouldn't affect the rankings)

 

[The Boston Dangler]

i'd like to propose a 1-week break for the eng challenge, or make the challenge span 2 weeks.

my reasons:
jello has had his hands full, and i don't expect much free time this weekend.
this is a pretty sophisticated challenge, so build time could be huge.
there may be the need for clarification of the rules.

what do you guys think?

 

[DrPizza]

Sounds good to me.

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

1 week break sounds very good to me.

If someone else has another suggestion for the formula, I'd be very willing to use it. I just picked some random materials and went with some very preliminary guesses on what would be appropriate point deductions per unit of material used.

Indeed those are minus signs in front of the materials. I'll edit in a + sign in front of the pennies supported to make it more clear.

I was talking to HomeBrewerDude about the challenge and he thought the points method might be overly complex.

Would you guys rather have a simple "you get X Post-Its, W inches of tape, etc." challenge first, or this points based one?
If we did set materials, we could either do a "Must be Y inches long... winner is most pennies supported"
or we could set it up as a "Must be Y inches long and support Z pennies... winner is least Post-Its (and other materials) used"
or even "Must support Z pennies, you have X Post-Its, W inches of tape, etc.... winner is the widest bridge"

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Originally posted by: DrPizza
Sounds good to me; we just have to hash out a few other rules - is there a minimum length to qualify? What units do we use when multiplying by the length? (cm or inches)? (edit: just for the sake of submission as this wouldn't affect the rankings)

I thought about a minimum length, but I had no idea what would be appropriate.

If someone wants to do some preliminary testing or just take a good guess at making a unified set of requirements for this challenge, I would appreciate it. Right now my living room and kitchen are full of boxes and I'm not really feeling the desire to make this week's challenge happen.

 

[The Boston Dangler]

how's the electricity in the new place?

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Originally posted by: The Boston Dangler
how's the electricity in the new place?

Hopefully more reliable

I don't even know if I'm getting the place yet and the lease starts on Saturday. Cutting it a little close...

 

[DrPizza]

Perhaps there should be an upper limit for the amount of each material that can be used? I like the points system, but it seems that given enough paperclips, you could potentially hold hundreds of pounds of pennies. There's got to be some sort of limit - either limit the dimensions of the bridge (width and height, but not length) else limit the total number of each item.

i.e. consider a 1 inch span. 1 paper clip across the span (-5 points), and 20 pennies on top of the paperclip. Repeat to make the bridge wider (not longer), and every paper clip in width, you'd gain 15 points. Once your bridge was 150 feet wide (but only an inch long), you'd piss off the people in the bank who were wondering what you were doing with all the pennies.

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Good point.

I'd like to keep it a bridge dimension limit rather than a material limit since I'd like to give people more freedom in construction.

Is anybody a paperclip expert? Is there a way to specify paperclip type universally?

I know I have some of these, but I don't know if the specs on those are universally meaningful...
http://www.officedepot.com/a/p...-Brand-Paper-Clips-No/

 

[The Boston Dangler]

consider this:

bridging a single span of 12 or 18 inches, top surface only, etc.
maximum width over span is 3 inches
minimum clearance over span ???


i think the points system is cool, but the materials need to cost more.

+1 point per penny supported
ok

-1 point per Penny used (in construction)
does this include pennies used structurally over the span, or just the footings?

-2 points per Post-It Note used
-10?

-3 points per inch of 1 7/8" Duct Tape used
-15?

-5 points per small paperclip used
-20?

 

[Freshgeardude]

while I agree on subtracting points for certain supplies, those points should be AFTER a set limit.

meaning. set a limit on how many of x,y, and z. Then after that put up the subtraction system.

if you are going to take points off from the beggining, we will all be in the negatives and then negative X positive will be an even larger negative.


P.S- this is my 2000th post!

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Originally posted by: Freshgeardude
while I agree on subtracting points for certain supplies, those points should be AFTER a set limit.

meaning. set a limit on how many of x,y, and z. Then after that put up the subtraction system.

if you are going to take points off from the beggining, we will all be in the negatives and then negative X positive will be an even larger negative.


P.S- this is my 2000th post!

What if we said something like "You get X points worth of building supplies for free, and then anything over that, you pay for by subtracting points" (that way you don't limit someone by imposing that they have to use paperclips for example if they don't want to)?

How big X should be would depend on the point deduction system and how large we want the bridges to be.

 

[Possessed Freak]

So... I use a stack of post-it notes as is then toss pennies after pennies on it. Brilliant!

Of course, I am thinking that I will go DEEP in the negatives if I do this upcoming challenge. Should be fun though. Maybe I can net 1 point.

 

[DrPizza]

I propose that we use something other than pennies for weight - something else that's uniform & easy to obtain. Ultimately, I think this is one of the reasons for low participation. A lot of people enjoy designing something, but when you need to go to the bank for $20 worth of pennies, then it becomes a little too cumbersome. I'm thinking that with a 12inch span, it may even be closer to $50 or even $100 in pennies, if not more. Think about how many pennies Yoyo had balanced above the area of a single post-it.

How about cans of soda or beer? I'd think that 12oz cans would be roughly uniform in mass.

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

I've done some testing with different soda brands and the mass is very similar. As you may suspect, they're all very close to neutral buoyancy in water.

As for cans, that would seem to work well if we're trying to minimize materials or maximize length. I don't think it would work well for trying to maximize mass supported since the jumps from 1 can to the next is so significant.

 

[DrPizza]

Originally posted by: YOyoYOhowsDAjello
I've done some testing with different soda brands and the mass is very similar. As you may suspect, they're all very close to neutral buoyancy in water.

As for cans, that would seem to work well if we're trying to minimize materials or maximize length. I don't think it would work well for trying to maximize mass supported since the jumps from 1 can to the next is so significant.

Perhaps two different masses - one for larger amounts, then the pennies to fine tune? Duct tape & paper clips? I don't think 100 pounds is out of the question. That's a lot of pennies.

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

So I guess we need to figure out how many pennies we're going to call equivalent to 1 soda can?

 

[Freshgeardude]

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_...can_of_soda_pop_weight

(240.7962 grams) divided by (2.5 grams) = 96.31848

for the sake of it just call it 100 pennies= 1 soda can.


it doesnt sound like a lot, since yoyo has already stacked over 1000

 

[The Boston Dangler]

Originally posted by: DrPizza
I propose that we use something other than pennies for weight - something else that's uniform & easy to obtain. Ultimately, I think this is one of the reasons for low participation. A lot of people enjoy designing something, but when you need to go to the bank for $20 worth of pennies, then it becomes a little too cumbersome. I'm thinking that with a 12inch span, it may even be closer to $50 or even $100 in pennies, if not more. Think about how many pennies Yoyo had balanced above the area of a single post-it.

How about cans of soda or beer? I'd think that 12oz cans would be roughly uniform in mass.

i was thinking a longer span would actually reduce the number of pennies, since the strength decreases as length increases.

18 inches long + 1 inch wide + no support directly underneath = not a lot of pennies/coke cans/etc.

on second thought, that would work with finite resources, but with a points system and no cap, there's nothing stopping someone from building a 2x4.

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Ok, if I started this back up, would anyone be interested in participating?

 

[Possessed Freak]

Ok, if I started this back up, would anyone be interested in participating?

sure, provided you come up with common weights that do not take 100's of the single object.