**IMPORTANT FIRST EMAIL BLAST**/Game Tip and 2004 Competition Manual Information!!

[swando]

Originally Posted by DaSpyder

http://www.heavenr.com/faith/twopaths.html This site contains those exact words, im thinking stairway to heaven!

as are 42 other people in this thread. the general consensus is that stairs will be involved. then again, everyone may end up wrong.

[Eric Reed]

My theory, with 2% confidence:

10 ft/sec represents the max velocity of an oscillator, such as a pendulum, ball on a curved surface, skateboard on a half-pipe (!). I think (again with 2% confidence...I didn't actually do the math, but 'adjusted' an example I found) that a 100 lb object starting at a 10ft altitude down an arc would be somewhere around 10 ft/sec at the bottom of the arc.

All right, I'll be bold. 3% confidence.

Eric.

[KenWittlief]

we get it from the cryptic reference to the AC/DC song 'stairway to heaven'...

[bangs head against wall] AAAAAHHHHHHHGGGGGgggg!!!

Pete Townshend must be spinning in his grave right about now!

[/bangs head against wall]

[KenWittlief]

Originally Posted by Eric Reed

My theory, with 2% confidence:

10 ft/sec represents the max velocity of an oscillator, such as a pendulum, ball on a curved surface, skateboard on a half-pipe (!). I think (again with 2% confidence...I didn't actually do the math, but 'adjusted' an example I found) that a 100 lb object starting at a 10ft altitude down an arc would be somewhere around 10 ft/sec at the bottom of the arc.

All right, I'll be bold. 3% confidence.

Eric.

excellent idea, but you REALLY didnt do the math

an object rolling down an arc'd incline would be going 10ft/S after loosing 18" of height - and it doesnt matter how much it weighs

but I think you have hit on something else - maybe there will be a rotating platform, or goal - lets say... 8 feet in diameter, and its outer surface will be rotating at 10 ft/S.

you have to either get your bot onto the rotating platform, or place scoring objects onto it?

[danielkitchener]

Here's a link to my post on another thread with ideas about this blast:
Here

[Mr. Ivey]

I'm going to throw my 2 cents into the pot. Heck with everyone's 2 cents in here whoever gets the guess will have about a dollar in winnings. My hypothesis broken down:

The Song: Stairway to Heaven by Led Zepplin are the lyrics the song is from. The title of the song leads that there will be stairs, seems obvious. But as I read through the lyrics of the song there were some things that made me laugh and think... Right after the lyric that was given from the song appears the phrase: "Your head is humming and it won't go because you don't know" (in reply, yes I have a head ache from thinking and honestly I still don't know what the play is for sure). Also earlier in the song appears this phrase: "And you know sometimes words have two meanings... Sometimes all of our thoughts are misgiven". This leads to my presumption that while we are given this information about two paths that we can switch from and the Vmax=10ft/sec, couldn't it be something that we are just not thinking and it's right in front of us... Sometimes our thoughs, our imagination generates more suspicioun than needed, and could it cause us to go to far in our guess.

Vmax: yes Vmax is maximum velocity in physics, just like we went over for the millionth time in class today, but V could also mean vertical. An antonym for max is min, and if "words sometimes have two meanings" this might be true.

10: Also things in scoring that are 10 feet, basketball goal...

I just wanted to throw some observations out there, I honestly don't want to make a prediction because then I will have in my mind that, that is the play. So on Saturday we will see.
Ivey

[Eric Reed]

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

excellent idea, but you REALLY didnt do the math

an object rolling down an arc'd incline would be going 10ft/S after loosing 18" of height - and it doesnt matter how much it weighs

Oops...yeah, I didn't notice that the mass cancelled out in the example formula. Oh, well...I still give it 3%, maybe 4% confidence of having something to do with the competition

Eric.

[Dan Richardson]

Well My 2 cents.. I havn't really posted anything just because I've been well Thinking..

So here are some of my randomed though processes

We all know FIRST knows we are too bright to let a led z' lyric go past us, so we should know that they know that. Establishing this, we should automatically assume that FIRST wouldn't make it that obvious they want us to go above and beyond. We realise that STAIRway to heaven is the song title.. well then we think STAIRS.. but the thing is I think thats exactly what FIRST wants us to think.

Lets think outside the box. What could either be something inside the song.. or in the song title itself that could be of use to our investigation. Start thinking what else could this mean.. mayb they want to strive for perfection in this game.. take the stairway to heaven. Mayb they are combining all the best aspects of past games.. and making them into a super uber game.

I'm not sure quite yet.. how to put everything together.. but I have only 1 class tommorrow I've got to figure it out.. I just don't think it'll be stairs.. I gotta think outside this darned box

dan

[Elgin Clock]

Another even more obscure guess here...

I listened to the song in question and the verse that is quoted starts at the 4:30 mark into the song...

4:30 = 4 robots on the field, and 30 seconds of autonomous??

Well, remember how obscure the hint last year was.. umm... yeah..

[Jedi Padawan]

Ok through the combined intuitive powers of 3 years experience I derive the following clues from the BOM and the Hints.

First (no pun intended) there will be stairs and probably an obstacle of some sort that will force you to use them. (say in this case a long ramp with a gate on it (3 casters would be about right for that)) and the stairs would be the shorter way around. (what else are we doing with that insane amount of PVC and 2x12's??) I also derive that there will probably either be a lengthened autonomous or a complete autonomous with competitive edge design so that you press a go button and you can take over. This makes too much sense to ignore, It would challenge the older teams (program wise as well as mechanically) and give the younger teams a fair shot. All the older teams have pretty much figured out a universal base or some sort of method to speed up the process whereas the younger ones still need alot of time to figure this out each year and consequently don't have as much time to devote to fully programming in an autonomous mode.

oh well thats my 2% confidence


P.S. by the way my team as an idea submitted the idea of a spinning octagon in the center of the field last year, go figure if it's a spinning item with stairs I can see this suddenly becoming problematic...

[rees2001]

Here are some random thoughts on the clue...
10 = ten is a little obvious.So Binary 10 = decimal 2.
Vmax could mean max velocity, again it seems a bit obvious. like stated above it could be the vertical limit.
The Stairway to Heaven idea = Stairs, again obvious. (Or first just doesn't think we know any music). From what I've been told if you play Stairway to Heaven backwards you get a satanic message, so there will be fire & brimstone in this years game.
So in conclusion there will be 2ft high flames that the robots will have to drive through.

Or we can all just wait until tomorrow.

[scuba_sm]

Well, I'm thinking that if Vmax is truly a max, it's going to be something that is unalterable by teams, so it can't the max speed of robots, motors, etc. Anybody ever play with wiffle balls? Those plastic balls with the holes in them? Those reach terminal velocity pretty quick, maybe around 10 fps... They are also cheap and plentiful, so we don't need to worry about them being hard to find. Who knows?

[White Wolf]

Eric and I were talking yesterday where, among other things, he proposed the pendular possibility. I liked it.

He boldly gave it a 3% confidence. I think it is at least 50%. That may be foolish, but I have great faith in fools, my friends call it self-confidence.

I also could see a kind of Skee-Ball kinda game, where the pendulum periodically blocks the shot. Eric proposed the pendulum could regulate how many points you get if you score.

It was enjoyable to speculate.