No antimatter allowed on robot

[Jan Olligs]

When I read this (post 857) on the FIRST message board, I was a bit bewildered:

> 4) If we manage to make anti-matter from parts purchased from SPI,
> are we allowed to use it on our robot?

A) No, please see rule K6.

Did I misunderstand something, or does it mean what I think (Star Trek, here we are)?
Even my dictionary says: "antimatter: n (1950): matter composed of antiparticles".
I have to admit that I am completely confused...

[Ashes]

with reading what you wrote I too am very confused! but hey last least you are not alone in the matter!

[Radiant Phoenix]

You know, speaking in terms of Physics and Astronomy it's totally impossible. When antimatter comes in contact with normal matter there is quite a large explosion energy and when that burst is done, (it takes an extremely short amount of time), there is nothing left, except some gamma rays. (Some like that at any rate...)
^^ Did they, perhaps, mean anti-gravity?
Athena

[Jan Olligs]

Of course I know what antimatter is and what it does. That's why I think that it would be an offensive part of the robot and therefore forbidden. Or they could try to power the 'bot with matter-amtimatter annihalations which would blast the whole US away (if they use macroscopic amounts).
That's why I thought that antimatter had another meaning than the normal physical one, but obviously it doesn't.
And although there is no such thing antigravity, it would be really nice to have a device that causes it on the robot: No more weight limitations and a great robot speed...

[Radiant Phoenix]

^^ We'll just throw dark matter in along with it and we'll be ready to go!! ::closes eyes:: Yes, to have an undetectable robot, the possibilities are endless. ^^;;
Athena

[Suneet]

Eric Rassmussen sent me an e-mail in the 2001 season telling us we couldn't use dilithium (element 119) on our robot, since it would be too difficult to acquire for most teams.

Trying to control a matter-antimatter reaction with magnetic fields only, without dilithium, would be pointless even if the team could produce suitable anti particles from small parts material.

They could, however, produce a bit of positron radiation from normal matter that displays radioactivity through positron decay. Perhaps they planned to isolate such an isotope from small parts stock metal.

[Matt Leese]

We were the ones to ask that question. It was more along the lines of "we had three serious questions, let's throw another one in for fun." We figured since it's anti-matter, it would have anti-weight, and therefore would make the robot lighter. I don't agree with FIRST's interpretation of the rules as apply antimatter wouldn't be a chemical change (where you switch around which atoms make up a component) but instead an atomic change (where you destroy entire atoms).

For those actually interested, there is a possiblity that anti-matter would "fall up" (ie, have antigravity). Physicists however find it unlikely. To date, they haven't been able to create enough of the stuff to actually measure whether or not it would fall up or down.

Matt

[Christina]

::shakes her head at Joseph::
Joseph...always starting trouble.

~Christina

[Jan Olligs]

Originally posted by Matt Leese
It was more along the lines of "we had three serious questions, let's throw another one in for fun."

It's now clear, I am just surprised that FIRST actually answered seriously to that question. I thought that you wanted to use it for annihilation with other robots. I suppose that the storage devices would be too heavy to make it weigh less anyway, although I have never heared about antigravity and thought that even antiparticles had a nonnegative mass.
The idea of a hovering robot is fun, though. How about some air out of the pneumatic system to build a hovercraft?

[smokescreen]

Antimatter is good and all, but we our R&D team is cooking up something even better.

I can't say much, except we extract the energy density contained within a few tins of fuschia colored SPAM.