<p>Oh yeah. Nick's cool. Ahh those were the days. </p>
<p>Of course I know Dan Chao...</p>
<p><em>evil eyes</em> yes....Dan Chao....</p>
<p>Ah First Robotics...how did you guys do this year?</p>
<p>And ah. North Dakota. I remember driving throgh there. It was...well...like any other place but with a "welcome to north dakota" sign. It was nice tho</p>
<p>We got first place in our regional (Finger Lakes) at RIT. We were also divisional champions at the nationals in Atlanta. Overall, we got third place nationally, because we lost the qualifying match to go into the national final match. </p>
<p>Ooo....</p>
<p>Well congrats anyways</p>
<p>yay scioly! i just came back from my states competition (yeah, i know, it's ridiculously late).. we're going to nationals! gotta love it. and triple gold in chem events? couldn't be any better. </p>
<p>lol. but our states compeition is a whole seperate story... one loooooong story.</p>
<p>Haha. </p>
<p>Where are you from? (definatly not new york, they competed...2 months ago. lol)</p>
<p>P.s. congrats!</p>
<p>I'm from PA (damn hard state, as well, it had the best average between its two teams at nationals last year - a whopping 6th). and both top teams (as well as 2 others that could place top 20 at nationals) are in our region. i hate our region.</p>
<p>Nice.</p>
<p>I heard about the PA teams, quite competative. Unfortunatly not enough against the New York champ. Since they still...win...nationals every year. </p>
<p>Damn them and making the rest of new york look like idiots. haha. fun.</p>
<p>lol. fayetteville-manlius (excuse my spelling)? they're amazing at study events. the year they won they had like 9 gold medals in study events. they're sssiiiiick... but they couldn't bulid, and that's the only thing that gives us (and others) a chance</p>
<p>but the team to compete against is troy from CA.. they're ridiculous. at last year's nationals they had ONE event outside the top 20! at nationals! they've also won more national titles than anyone else in the history of olympiad.</p>
<p>Haha, true that. Though I've never gone to nationals, my school has so we've heard stories. </p>
<p>Fayeteville-manlius....Ah....if only we had classes dedicated to sci oly...</p>
<p>wow...look at all these science nerds lol...nah jk jk, no seriously, i'm jk, umm, i just gotta say is getting into rochester was luck and since i did EDII, it helped, what did attract them was that i had much of my hospital experience and everything in rochester even though being from south jersey...my uncle and family are in rochester, which did help, i guess cause it was more personal....yeah my scores definitely suck 1230/1810, 700+ on sat 2's, 3's on bio and chem APs, rank of like 16/309...some good ecs like umdnj medical science academy, etc...</p>
<p>they have a class dedicated to scioly?! i want that! we just meet every day after school for 2-3 hours starting as soon as rules come out. and then, towards competition, late nights till like 7:30.</p>
<p>Yeah, same here. but they have a class and after school. I feel cheated. I wanted a class, we probobly would be national champions if we had that much time allowed (and a bigger budget then...well...0)</p>
<p>heh.. from experience, i've found that a lot of that allowed time isn't actually spent doing scioly work. just fooling around. as for budget, i don't know, but something tells me ours is also zero.. but we fundraise. </p>
<p>and the school district payed our trip to nationals last year for 'special achievement' or whatnot. they're not doing that again this year.. tho it would make sense... we achieved a lot more last year than the previous ones.</p>
<p>Yeah same here. If we win our trip would be paid, but our mission and robot were made of cardboard that we had lying around (still placed incredibly well so take that....uh...everyone else...)</p>
<p>Actually my personal favorite of the "no budget" technology thing is a team in my regional competition. One of their robots was a brick with a motor on the back of it (oh and wheels glued to the brick) that would swing an arm so it qualified as a robot, but couldn't do anything. </p>
<p>Ah....no money....what a life...</p>
<p>yeaaaahh.. we dont work like that. we don't have a budget, but when we had mission, we made our own circuit boards, because one of our members' dad is into that kind of stuff. and we buy sooo much balsa wook. we probably spend a couple thousand dollars a year on olympiad. and yet.. we don't have a budget. sometimes i wonder where all the money comes from.</p>
<p>Yeah...I know.</p>
<p>The only good thing about our mission was the rules haven't really changed in the past decade. So we have this hand-me-down mission that was the right shape and what not. But every year we would gut it and leave the circuit board alone beside reprogramming or something...</p>
<p>My personal favorite low budget item was this "clemintine" box robot. Scooped the things into the box and then the box dumped it into the goal. That was fun...</p>
<p>I think we were completely self funded...(that is student's paid for everything). That and we..."borrowed" school equipment and materials. </p>
<p>It belonged to the school! it's just that we never gave it back...oh well.</p>
<p>lol. this is kind of unrelated, but the best robot i ever saw was one that beeped when it backed up. </p>
<p>well, second to only one other one... i don't know if you remember the robot rules from last year (and, i think, partly from the years before that).. with no ballons, just some corks and ping pong balls? how at regionals, a couple teams would do a perfect run, but maybe have like 20-40 seconds? well, i got to witness a 3.9 second run. i couldn't do it that fast with my hands, forget remote control. needless to say, they got first in the state after that.</p>
<p>we use school equipment as well, of course, especially our coach's chem stuff. i feel kind of guilty. i've gone through quite a lot of chemicals making tests for ppl. and we're still housed in the rooms that use to belong to the old coach, who doesnt run it anymore. i don't know why he still lets us used them</p>
<p>and im feeling a bit guilty hijacking this thread and making it an olympiad one. lol</p>
<p>holy crap...</p>
<p>I watched a dozen robots at states and none of them got anywhere near that....</p>
<p>3.9?! what was it? i gianst scoop and a catapult?!</p>
<p>Ah well. Sci oly is worth hijacking many threads. I mean we have 2 national forum webpages, why not start leeching on to here. </p>
<p>:P</p>
<p>lol... the 3.9 was... oh god. i don't even know. it's the definition of perfection i guess. and their robot can move very quickly... it's penncrest - they're ... ridiculous at building. they have the best treb in the nation, and would have the best robot if they didn't have some mishap last year. and they're in our damn region. their tower efficiency for this year's states, for example, was 2750. that's a 5.5 gram tower holding. ... <em>sigh</em></p>
<p>as for our team, at nationals last year we got a 6.6 second robot run. and there was one team that did it better. but building events aren't really our forte. interestinly enough, nothing is really our forte, besides maybe forensics.</p>
<p>eegats...</p>
<p>Foresnics was an interestign one if i recall correctly...</p>
<p>Actually what peterved me about the new events was the "best all around sci olympian" i mean...that doesn't even make sense....</p>