Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Imagine this is the most ingenious title ever

Yesterday we and our device once again undertook the long and arduous trek traversing two levels of carpet, wood, metal, and whatever other materials are present in the floors of the engineering hall, that we might make yet another pilgrimage to the imperfect representation of that which we we will encounter on the first of December - with twofold purpose. Having completed the second half of our device over the weekend, we wished test the soundness of its design on a surface more with a coefficient of friction more closely akin to that of the hardwood flooring of the Chiles center than the hyper-traction of the carpet in the halls. After having determined that our device worked satisfactorily, albeit still requiring a few minute changes involving balsa wood, elmers glue, and threadlock (the threadlock was for the hex screw binding the axle to the gear from which it derives its motion), we once more entered the concrete lab to unveil our device for the second time in the presence of three judges, upon whose shoulders rests the decision of which device deserves to be called "most ingenious". How did it go? Relatively well, I think (and therefore am). Our device performed mostly as expected. We did encounter a few traction issues which we believe are largely due to the amount of dust from the floor which affixed itself to the rubber of our tires, lowering their coefficient of friction. But far from criticizing our device for these shortcomings, the judges provided us with suggestions to remedy this problem, which we have already implemented and which included positioning the battery further toward the back so as to place more weight on the tires and sanding rough lines into the otherwise-very-slick tagboard portion of our secondary device. We now consider our device complete, and will focus all efforts on practice. So in all respects, I would consider this presentation of our device to have been a success. But if asked to predict our changes of winning, I would give it as a percentage equal to the square root of -1 (much as I would like it to be e^i(pi) x 10^2)). In other words, the only thing certain here is uncertainty (along with death and taxes but neither are relevant to the topic at hand). And yes Osterberg, getting at least one point is also close in there too.

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