Westminster Invitational 2006

Yesterday (Nov. 11, 2006) was the Science Olympiad competition, the Westminster Invitational. This has to be one of the earliest tournaments in Science Olympiad. Normally the invitationals aren’t until January.

The boomilevers there were not impressive (including mine). Only one boomilever had an efficiency score over 200, which did happen to be mine. I placed first with a score of 252. My boomilever weighed 18.4 grams, and held 10.2 pounds (4.64 kilograms). This is a far call from my hoped score. My boomilever broke right at the joint to the base. The joint itself did not break, but right after the joint the wood failed. I will have to add extra support here next time. Evidently there was more force at that point than I thought.

My boomilever also had a big problem. Somehow I built a warp into the boomilever, so the base had to be slanted in order for the loading block to be level. I am still not sure how this happened, but will pay much closer attention to avoid this in the future.

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