Bridge Coming off the Fulcrum ...

[archiver]

Posted by Nate Smith at 03/20/2001 2:41 PM EST


Other on team #66, Frostbite, from Willow Run High School and GM Powertrain.


In Reply to: Bridge Coming off the Fulcrum ...
Posted by Roly Anderson on 03/20/2001 8:55 AM EST:



: I watched all the matches at the West Michigan regional and noticed that approximately 8 or 10 times that the bridge came off the fulcrum. From my vantage point, I could NOT determine why it happens.
: Dean was there, right in front of the bridge, when it came off as the announcer was saying "The bridge has come off its fulcrum again, I don't know if they will be able to balance it"
:
: In my opinion, in the interest of fairness and a better game, FIRST should (as gracious professionals themselves), do one of two things:

: 1. Fix the bridges, by increasing the size of the L channel, so the bridge cannot come off. or......
:
: 2. Stop the match when it happens and replay the match, or at the very least, stop the clock and put the bridge back on and finish the game. After all, the referees don't appear to be real busy "refereeing" or watching for infractions of the rules this year, and could watch for that.

As it seems like I often do with various things here, I disagree with the comments made re. a bridge coming off the center barrier being a "broken field." Specificially in the updates, there were several questions asked about this situation...specifically Q/A 15...

Their answer(in part): Unseating the bridge from the 4x6 base is not expected to be "easy" due to the dimensions of the angle brackets and the weight of the bridge. Intentionally unseating the bridge will be considered "damage" to the field and lead to disqualification of the alliance. Unintentional unseating of the bridge would not be penalized, but it would be impossible to "balance" the bridge because it would not be supported exclusively by the base.

SO, they never said it could not be done, just that they didn't expect it to be easy. While we may have proved them wrong there, changing such an important rule to the game(importance determined by performance thus far) after the last week of regionals(with the last set of regionals already being set up, it's really too late for a rules change in time for them), could cause quite a contraversy due to the fact, as some have mentioned, that the outcome of matches, and possibly of tournaments, could be affected.

: Another thing:
: When dividing up the teams for the divisions at nationals, I think FIRST should split up the teams equally between the divisions according to their experience, as follows:
: Lets say for example that there are 100 teams with 3 years as a registered first team, 25 would be in each division. If there are 120 rookie teams, then put 30 in each division etc. They could even indicate on the divisional team lists, how many years experience each team has!

As one with experience on the new scoring system, I can say that the system does not know how many years any given team has been in the competition, and therefore has no way to determine pairings for divisions based on this. Never having run the division pairing portion of the system, I can not say how it is done with 100% certainty(and the computer I'm on right now doesn't have the right version of Access to look at the code,) but my assumption is that it is a completely random method.


Nate