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Originally Posted by KenWittlief
You have it exactly right! We dont have time to teach HS students about boring FIRST principles: Mass, acceleration, force, energy, impulse, power, torque, metal fatigue, shear stress
when we can re use the work of someone else who already did all that hard math stuff for us 8 years ago
no time to waste, there are giant plastic trophies at stake here!
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(Dare I note which trophies
are the really big ones?)
Ken, I see where you're going here. Eight seasons ago, IFI wasn't in the KOP, Andy Baker was only in his second season with the TechnoKats, the highest team number was 336, and nobody had played Stairway to Heaven backwards in the hopes of finding a game hint.
Why do I bring this up? Over the years, the game will change. The arm on Ockham that hoisted our tetras probably wouldn't have done so well hoisting Bob in 2004. The drivetrain we tried on Chomp this year would've probably resulted in our butts getting kicked in 2003. Zip ties dragging on the carpet this year would've resulted in a funny look, while last year they proved essential for many. 71's infamous 2002 machine would be laughed out of the inspection area for several reasons (file cards, 5' expanding rule, no flopbots, take your pick). While you can steal the basic concepts from past years' robots, you can only be so effective with them. At some point, you're going to have to fire up Inventor (or Pro/E, or SolidWorks, or...you get the idea) and create something nobody's ever seen before. Nobody had a system in their storage room to shoot a lightweight ball from twenty feet out, or a sure-fire method to climbing a ramp that steep.
I suppose the bottom line is this: While there's a lot of borrowing past concepts, there's also plenty of room for folks to innovate, inspire, and shock the heck out of us on Saturday afternoon.