Awesome job with Junkyard at Nats - Feedback?

[DeltaHat]

To all who competed in JYC at Nationals, you all did an awesome job and should be proud. The devices you all built were quite sophisticated and showed a lot of innovation.

The event will be much different next year for B division, and I would like to make it better.

Changes so far:
Mystery material is being SIGNIFICANTLY revamped. Lots of feedback said it needed to be changed.
The two options on the table are 1. drop it entirely, or 2. implement a phased system (no MM at regionals, a set of 5-10 possible MMs at states, and anything at Nats).

Only one challenge will be used for B division. Everybody will know what they are getting into before competition.

The challenge is more process oriented instead of results oriented. Think more mission ultra-light instead of mystery architecture.

So, what worked? What didn't? I welcome your feedback to make the event better.

[jazzy009]

I'm liking the using only one challenge. I was lucky all year (state and nats) to get what I wanted (coin sorter both times). I would have been totally disappointed if the challenge we built very well didn't get to compete. We always tried to improve the scale but then would go back to the coin sorter and make minor improvements to it.

[wlsguy]

First, Thanks for the oppertunity to provide feedback. It is not always so well received.
I'm sure you have already read the other topics on junkyard.

This year the event tended toward a mini Mission possible. The devices were well tested and teams generally had no trouble with the mystery materials. This makes the event like all of the other building events that require extensive preparation and testing with minimal troubleshooting at the event. This area seems to be well covered by the current events "Wright Stuff, Tractory, Bridges, Electric Vehicle, etc"

I guess the first thing to consider would be "how is junkyard different than the other build events and what it it trying to teach the students?" I see junkyard as the event for the "out of the box" thinkers. It could be the event that promotes innovation, creative thinking, problem solving.
The JYC rules of the 07 trial event were like this. They were something that "MacGyver" would really like and do well at. I know this goes against your original idea of "Think more mission ultra-light instead of mystery architecture" but is just another direcion to consider.

If the event sticks around in more or less the current form; I would drop the mystery material entirely. Teams tended to be able to accomodatethem with no trouble. It was really pointless. Also, having an event that doesn't allow for a max score is also helpful for grading and preventing ties. (more like physcial science lab or storm the castle; less like trajectory, wheeled vehicle, or scrambler)

Please pm me if you want a copy of the old trial event rules.

Thanks again for the oppertunity for feedback.

[DeltaHat]

Are you referencing the boat rules at Wichita? Those were fun, albeit difficult to adapt to a multi-tournament series like the standard SO season.

I do agree that teams were able to adapt to the mystery material easily at the national level. There was only one team who didn't use it. I still feel that the mystery material is part of what makes JYC different. It also serves as a discriminator between student built devices and the so-called "dad-builts". In theory, only a student who built their own device would know it well enough to modify it onsite successfully.

Next year expect significantly more on-site adaptation of the device.

[nejanimb]

I think Junkyard was a pretty cool event this year, but I think its purpose wasn't fulfilled. This year, it felt much more like "Scale and Coin Sorter" than it did a Junkyard Challenge. I don't know what other teams did, but it seemed like the mystery object was pretty easy to completely neutralize - I know that's a lot of what my team did. I think it definitely could've been made a lot harder. My team was thinking of all the ways in which one could give some sort of ridiculous challenge - from golf clubs to those hopping kids toys for the scale (the coin sorter had much less fun things to throw at it, since there were no exciting forms of the challenge object). I do think the scale was a much better challenge overall.

In a lot of ways, each "Scale" and "coin sorter" were cool events. I did like what sean9keenan suggested in the other thread - let alternates test the other device as part of a trial event or something, since teams work way too hard on them to not ever get a chance to show them off. I think one of the issues with this event is that it became, at least this year, an event that demanded a high amount of precision, but forced teams to introduce a new variable. I think if there were ways to demand lots of on-site modifications, that'd be cool, but it'd be very frustrating. It totally changes the purpose of the event - it goes from a strict build event, which is about perfection of a given design (akin to vehicle or trajectory) to a practice event, more like Experimental Design or picture this, even. From what I gather, the goal is to create something that's halfway between those two - part building and construction, part practice and quick thinking. I think the mystery material needs to be made harder, not easier.

One thing I thought would be really interesting is if teams were forced to use everything they brought in the box. That would force people to be really careful with the things they decided to add, and it would prevent teams from just unpacking the device and having it ready to go. If we'd have to figure out a way to incorporate all of the scale parts into a coin sorter and vice versa, that would have made this event a lot harder.

[bob3443]

well couldn't you just stick the other stuff to some random place and it would count as "being used"?

[croman74]

well couldn't you just stick the other stuff to some random place and it would count as "being used"?

I believe that is what the issue was. Teams probably just stuck the object somewhere where it wouldn't affect anything at all. I think that next year in Div. B I might do this. It sounds fun.

[haven chuck]

One thing I thought would be really interesting is if teams were forced to use everything they brought in the box. That would force people to be really careful with the things they decided to add, and it would prevent teams from just unpacking the device and having it ready to go. If we'd have to figure out a way to incorporate all of the scale parts into a coin sorter and vice versa, that would have made this event a lot harder.

The problem with this though is that if teams brought things like tape, glue, nails, hammer, etc. that wouldnt be used in the device, but used for constructing it, they would need to somehow incoorporate empty rolls of duct tape or things like that into the device. If you were to have the mystery object, this wouldnt work.

However, i agree that the mystery object should be harder, or changed in some way. It could done like instead of just an object, more of a concept. Like beforehand, you know the task will involve sorting objects, and then coins could be given on site. This would make it so a concept would need to be developed beforehand, but the device and integral parts would need to be designed on site. Also, it would make it so unlike this year, there would not be a so-called "wasted device" that wouldnt be used at all, even after hours of work put on it. If you were to do the two-challenge method like this year though, i think that sean9keenan's idea would be good so it is not completely wasted.

[nejanimb]

well couldn't you just stick the other stuff to some random place and it would count as "being used"?

I believe that is what the issue was. Teams probably just stuck the object somewhere where it wouldn't affect anything at all. I think that next year in Div. B I might do this. It sounds fun.

Well, no. The qualification was that, in order to count as being used, it's removal had to cause to device to cease to function as intended. It had to actually do something. Of course, even with this rule, there were still ways to make it easy to neutralize the mystery object, no matter what it was.

[rockhound]

I think that the best part of the event was the fact that you had to have a box of stuff that could be asked to do one of two things. Sure it sucked that coin sorted was never used for us but we had to think so hard as to how to make a device do both things and still fit the stuff we needed in our box. It might be better to not restrict to only Tipping the Scale at Regionals.

I think the event would just be better if they made the rules about mystery object and other things more clear. Or at least more concrete so there was less of a debate over the meaning.