Cario Wins 3rd in the state at Science Olympiad 2004

The guy on the far right Travis is a really cool guy.  I only got to meet him briefly, but very interesting.  He coached 2 events.  The robobilliards and the Wright stuff.

This year I coached a group of kids in the process of building a Rube Goldberg Device.  The task is to build a device that demonstrates a bunch of simple machines like levers, pulleys, incline planes, wedges etc,  Remember the old game Mouse Trap.  Well it's something like that.  We get points for each simple machine used and points for bonus marbles that are guided down to a collector (we don't have any), and for each second up to 60 that it runs we get points after which we are docked points.  Our machine runs in about 1.5 seconds, so no extra points for seconds run.

Here we're busy designing and discussing our project

Here we're working on the final result.  We borrowed Seth's garage to build the device.

and thar she be, a thang o' beauty if I do say so maself.  We placed 4th, but made a crucial error by not reading the directions carefully enough which cost us 100 points.  Otherwise we would have placed 1st.

Howie, Seth,  Nate, and Akhil

These three teachers managed the logistics of the event.

We drove to Newberry the night before and in the morning we're getting ready to go.

The whole arrives at Newberry college.

Stuart is new to the school but on a rush order produced this bridge.  It must hold weight up to 14 lbs I believe.

These are a couple of his competitors

These are our 2 entries in the flight event, The Wright Stuff.  They placed 1st and 2nd.  They built a plane from a kit and see which one flies the longest in the gymnasium.

A competitor

These are our entries in the robobilliards event. On the right is the winning team they got a perfect score and Seth who was on my project as well placed 5th.

Each machine must fit into the starting square then move the balls into the the 4 pockets.  To get maximum points the solid color balls must be in the same pockets as the striped of the same color.  No more than 4 balls per pocket.

The winner

Seth's machine.  Would have been great if he had more time to develop strategy to avoid pushing balls off the table.  Still did very well for a first time out.  5th among 20 or so entries.

Here the Judge is setting up the playing field

Here are some of the competitors

                    These guys didn't fit in the starting square                                        This machine kept falling over

          Pretty good but had trouble pushing the balls off the table          Great machine, but the operator kept pulling the cord

            Great simple design worked very well                                                    This girl's team did really well

                    Worked nearly perfectly                                                                    Couldn't get traction

This is Marjorie's team in the Roads Scholar Event.  Tests on map comprehension etc.  They placed second.

Here are a couple of the other Rube Goldberg devices

This is our Wheeled vehicle team

The wheeled vehicle must be self propelled and be able to run an exact distance between 1 and 10 meters.  Most are built with a propulsion mechanism and a braking mechanism.

and some of their competitors

This device was really cool.  The propulsion is a elastic band around the rear axle onto the post in the middle.  The braking system is the front axle.  It is a threaded rod.  The front wheel has a nut in the center that runs along the threaded front axel which brings the wheel all the way to one side up against the body which makes it stop dead.

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