2007 Science Olympiad Boomilever

Now that the 2007 Science Olympiad season is well over, I am releasing photos of a concept boomilever I made before regionals. Here is a video of the testing of the boomilever:

The boomilever broke because of all the force that was applied outwards on the bottom chords. The boomilever simply “split” apart and the loading block fell through. I didn’t anticipate the amount of force that would be pushing outwards. Normally my boomilevers broke at the joint to the attachment base. I later tried to add additional bracing but the boomilever never held more than 10kg. I think at the end of the season I was close to an efficiency score of 1000. My team didn’t make it past regionals that year, so I didn’t have a reason to try for more.