BEARSO Invitational

[CrayolaCrayon]

Good job doing the research. Yes, I hope Michigan has a live event before the end of the school year. I'm judging a Satellite Wright Stuff event for the Bellville and the Boyceville Wisconsin Invitationals. If your team can enter, and you can get into a flying site of some kind to video a "flight period", maybe you could enter.

Brian T

Glad to hear you'll be judging!

[xiangyu]

Xiangyu,

Good job doing the research. Yes, I hope Michigan has a live event before the end of the school year. I'm judging a Satellite Wright Stuff event for the Bellville and the Boyceville Wisconsin Invitationals. If your team can enter, and you can get into a flying site of some kind to video a "flight period", maybe you could enter.

Brian T

Ahh, very nice! Sadly I don't think my team is attending those two invitationals. There were so many options to choose from now that everything is online!

I think my regionals tournament is planning to have the builders compete in person in March. Do you know if your region is going to do something similar?

Xiangyu

[bearasauras]

Event Supervisor Review: Digital Structures

Thank you to everyone who competed in the Digital Structures event (previously known as Computilever)! We sincerely appreciate your flexibility and willingness trying out the new event! I personally love the event because it's not only a great virtual alternative for Boomilever where in-person competitions cannot be hosted but also the perfect opportunity to introduce students to working with computational models that are becoming all the more important for engineering in our digital age.

Submissions/Alternate Submissions: Submissions were required through three methods: Scilympiad (for submitting the estimate), SkyCiv (for submitting scores), and Google Forms (as a back-up submission). Teams that made an on-time submission via SkyCiv were ranked in Tier 1 and Tier 2. A handful of teams encountered technical difficulties with testing and/or submission. Most of these teams were able to reach a resolution and submit before the end of the event block. We were flexible with teams that did not submit a structure via SkyCiv as this was the first time ever the event was run. All coaches of teams that had submitted an estimate in Scilympaid were notified via email and their students given the same time frame to submit a screenshot of their structure via Google Forms. Teams that made a valid submission via Google Forms but not SkyCiv were then ranked together in Tier 3—rank 42 for Division B and rank 115 for Division C.

Construction Violations: A surprisingly high number of teams had Construction Violations in their submissions, despite the Science Olympiad add-on in SkyCiv displaying explicitly the numbers used for scoring. Across both divisions, 106 teams had Construction Violations, leaving only 49 teams in Tier 1. Of the Tier 2 teams across both divisions, 73 violated the Contact Width, 27 violated the Contact Depth, and 57 violated the Minimum Loading Distance. (The sum of these numbers exceeds 106 because some teams were affected by multiple violations.) Most teams with violations had numbers very close to the specifications we provided, suggesting that they may have neglected to account for cross-sectional size of members as specified in the rules. Still, this should have been caught before submission as the software shows you the numbers!

Overall: I was very impressed with the submissions by students, regardless of whether they were affected by Construction Violations. In both tiers, I saw many impressive scores and beautifully intricate structures. I even tried copying the designs of the winning teams but still couldn’t beat their scores—so like Boomilever, it’s more than just the design! In both divisions, the winning teams were at least 100 points ahead of the runner-up, each earning themselves their own bar on the histogram.

SkyCiv Improvements: We’re working with SkyCiv to improve the Science Olympiad add-on based on feedback we received from students. Some improvements SkyCiv has already made include adding more help text (such as reminders to turn on Competition Mode and to check for Construction Violations) and enabling submissions for participation points if a device cannot be tested. Your experience and feedback have been very helpful!

I’ve also written a detailed tutorial to using SkyCiv on the Scioly.org Wiki, which includes a list of common mistakes made by teams. I hope you’ll find these resources helpful.

computilever_2021_bc_bearso_scores_v3_public_cropped.png

[bjt4888]

Good job doing the research. Yes, I hope Michigan has a live event before the end of the school year. I'm judging a Satellite Wright Stuff event for the Bellville and the Boyceville Wisconsin Invitationals. If your team can enter, and you can get into a flying site of some kind to video a "flight period", maybe you could enter.

Brian T

Glad to hear you'll be judging!

Looking forward to some good flight videos.

Brian T

[eagerlearner102]

This is a general question but do you foresee future invitationals, regionals, or state competitions that will require Zoom proctoring to prevent people from searching up answers? I know for USNCO (chemistry olympiad) there were proctors using zoom, but this was possible because of the low proctor to student ratio.

[sneepity]

This is a general question but do you foresee future invitationals, regionals, or state competitions that will require Zoom proctoring to prevent people from searching up answers? I know for USNCO (chemistry olympiad) there were proctors using zoom, but this was possible because of the low proctor to student ratio.

I highly doubt it, like you mentioned, the student to proctor ratio is very high at many scioly tournaments. High quality tournaments would have a lot of unsearchable questions anyways, so the main issue would be tournaments with inexperienced writers who mostly write a lot of trivia questions. At that point, that's an issue that can only be solved with better writing. I still maintain my idea that with sufficient preparation on the student end and a well-written test, there isn't any need to worry about the cheaters.

[sneepity]

This is a general question but do you foresee future invitationals, regionals, or state competitions that will require Zoom proctoring to prevent people from searching up answers? I know for USNCO (chemistry olympiad) there were proctors using zoom, but this was possible because of the low proctor to student ratio.

I think that it would be too much effort and preparation, and there's a time limit to the tests too. 50 minutes should safely guarantee that kids won't have time to look up answers. And also, like Umaroth said, tests will have some questions that don't ask facts but instead ask for application or experience based question, which would need competitors to prepare beforehand. Cheating shouldn't be a major issue if coaches can monitor too! :D

[neetivaidya]

Is it possible to get a score of >2000?
If so, how?

[neetivaidya]

Is it possible to get a score of >2000?
If so, how?

Yep, a few teams have managed to build boomilevers of very high efficiency! You might find it helpful to refer to last year's boomilever discussion, as well as this season's boomilever forum as well. Since you also say that you're from Washington, you may also be interested in the SkyCiv Wiki page to learn more about testing a boomilever virtually. Good luck!!

[Pebble]

Is it possible to get a score of >2000?
If so, how?

I know this is way too late, but tips would be optimizing your boomilever to hold a little more than 15k to get that bonus, and eliminating unnecessary members that cause extra weight. Section size experimentation is important.