The FIRST Engineering Triathlon

The Engineering Triathlon will consist of three events:

Egg drop vehicle

Each team must design and construct an egg drop vehicle. The vehicle must carry a raw egg safely to the ground. The vehicle will be dropped out the first floor window of the high school. If the egg survives the drop, the vehicle will be dropped again from the second floor window. If it survives, it is dropped again, etc. If the egg survives a drop from the fourth floor, then we will break open the egg to make sure it isn't hard-boiled.

The winning design is the one that survives the highest drop.
Rules

Popsicle stick bridge

Each team must design and construct a popsicle stick bridge. The bridge must rise a minimum height and span a gap between two tabletops. The bridge will be weighed and then tested to see how much weight it will support.

The winning design is the one that has the highest ratio of supported weight to bridge weight.
Rules

Mousetrap car

Each team must design and construct a mousetrap car. The car will be a simple vehicle powered by a mousetrap spring. The car will be started by pulling back the spring and then releasing it from the starting line. The total distance that the vehicle travels will be recorded.

The winning car will be the car that travels farthest.
Rules

Resources

The resources available to the students are in the form of a kit of parts and a list of additional parts that they can use if they get them from outside.

Parts kits will be provided. The parts kit will include

Approved additional material consists of:

As was the case before, if either team makes a reasonable request for any raw material, we can discuss expanding this list as long as both teams have access to whatever raw materials are added.

In addition, any materials may be used for decoration purposes. We encourage you to paint, color, decal, or make other decorative additions, as long as the "decorations" do not serve any other purpose. Any decorations which appear in the judge's opinion to be functional are illegal.

Contest Entries

Students will have to provide parts lists for each entry, detailing that the entries were built to specifications, including a full explanation of how they followed the rules of construction. There will be a check-in procedure to make sure that all entries are legal.

In addition to submitting the entries for the final competition day, each team must also submit a two page writeup describing the design of each entry and how they arrived at the designs. They should include drawings or sketches, calculations, etc. This doesn't need to be formal, but there should be a complete report. Make sure they don't think the reports will be graded for grammar or other trivial details. I just want to see that they justified decisions that were made as part of the engineering process.

Schedule

The contest will be kicked off on December 1. The final contest date will be December 15th.