2023 Western Kentucky Physics Olympics: Event Descriptions

The Year of Water

Judges determine the overall winner based on each team's score in the five different events.

  1. Raft With Sail: the Do-Ahead Project
  2. Mechanical Water Heater: the Plan-Ahead Competition
  3. Wave Propagation: the Communication/Calculation Challenge
  4. Longest Load Supporting Arm: the Impromptu Team Physics Activity
  5. Fermi Questions: the Order-of-Magnitude Quiz

Do-Ahead Event: Raft With Sail

The goal of this event is to use only standard drinking straws to construct a floating raft with sail that can carry the most weight as your team propels it a distance of 0.6 meters.

Construction:
  1. Standard drinking straws (~19.5 cm long and ~0.5 cm in diameter) are the only component allowed to be used for raft construction.
  2. It is not permissible to use drinking straws with an "articulated" joint on one end of the straw (e.g., elbow straws).
  3. Straws can be bent in any way to build a raft, but cannot be cut, heated, or glued together.
  4. The constructed raft must be limited in size to fit into a 10x10x10 cm box. There is no limit to the mass of the raft.


Straws and Weights

Competition:
  1. This event will last a maximum of twenty minutes.
  2. During these twenty minutes, your team may make as many attempted runs across the water as can be accomplished, with the same or different weight for each run.
  3. Each run must commence with the desired amount of weight placed by the team members onto the raft, with the raft in contact with one end of the container.
  4. Team members propel their raft only by blowing against the raft's sail. No team member may touch any part of the raft during the run.
  5. The length of the plastic container is 0.6 m from one end to the opposite side.
  6. For a successful run, the raft must be propelled across the water to touch the opposite side of the plastic container, without sinking, while carrying the weights. A run will not be deemed successful if weights fall off the raft or the raft touches the bottom of the plastic container before it reaches the opposite side.
  7. Judges will measure the time of each run, starting when the raft is no longer in contact with the container and concluding when the raft first comes in contact with the opposite side.
  8. Team members are responsible for adding weights to the raft.
  9. Each team will be provided with a set of weights to add to their raft prior to each run. Weights will vary in size and mass, and will include 1g, 2 g, 5 g, 10 g, 20 g, 50 g, 100 g, 200 g and 500 g. The diameter of the cylindrical weights ranges from 32 mm to 45 mm with height up to 40 mm, depending on the weight.
  10. Team members may make repair or modify their raft during the competition, although no additional time will be granted beyond the twenty minute duration of the event.
  11. Judges will time each run, and the time will be used to break any ties resulting from the maximum weight carried during the successful runs.

If your team would like to borrow weights for testing your device, we can provide loans if notified by end of day Monday, February 20th.

Plan-Ahead Event: Mechanical Water Heater

***Rules update: Please note the changes to the competition rules, water mass and maximum time, in red font below.***

The goal of this event is to design, construct, and test a water heater device which using only mechanical means will increase by 5°C a given mass of water in the shortest amount of time.

Rules:
  1. Prior to 3:30 pm CT on Thursday, February 23rd, each team is required to submit a letter of intent with detailed description of how only mechanical energy is used by their device to heat the water as well as the approximate amount of square feet needed to set-up their device during competition.
  2. Energy inputs that are not mechanical (including chemicals, electric generators, flame, etc.) are strictly forbidden.
  3. While an electric generator cannot be used as energy input, it can be used to convert mechanical energy into other forms of energy; however, any electric generator used must be constructed by the team and cannot be a prebuilt one.
  4. Any or all of the team members may participate in the generation of the mechanical energy input.
  5. During the check-in time period during Saturday morning's registration, each team must demonstrate to the judges that their water heating device is completely dry and uniformly at room temperature.
  6. The initial temperature of the water will be established by the judges and announced to the teams five minutes before the beginning of the event.
  7. Immediately prior to the event, each team will be provided with a 44 oz Styrofoam cup containing 300 g of room temperature water. The team members are then responsible for placing the Styrofoam cup containing water into their device.
  8. The device must be constructed so that judges are able to place the metal probe of a digital thermometer into the water within the Styrofoam cup to determine the temperature increase.
  9. While water must start and finish in the Styrofoam cup, the device may be designed and constructed to transfer the water within the device during the heating process.
  10. Water must start at ambient pressure and must finish at ambient pressure.
  11. At least 250 g of the provided water must be returned to the Styrofoam cup before temperature measurement is performed by the judges. In case team has less than 250 g of water in the Styrofoam cup after heating, judges will add enough room temperature water to your reservoir to achieve 250 g.
  12. Time used to fill the Styrofoam cup up to 250 g by the judges is part of the time counted toward the ranking.
  13. The device may include one or more thermometers for the benefit of the team; however, the final temperature increase in the water must be measured by the judge's official digital thermometer.
  14. The ranking will be based on the time required to achieve 5°C temperature change, with top ranking for the shortest amount of time.
  15. The event will last for maximum of thirty minutes. Each team who does not succeed in reaching 5°C temperature increase in the designated 30 minutes will be ranked based on the achieved increase in temperature.

Communication/Calculation Challenge

Your team will divide into two groups. Two members of the team will be given information on wave propagation and produce a written plan to allow the remaining two teammates to accurately determine the location of the source in the shortest amount of time.

Impromptu Team Activity

The instructions regarding this event are not released until it begins, so everyone is on equal footing. Activity is the key word for this competition, with the goal being for each team to achieve the desired result as quickly as possible. The situation is designed to reward teamwork and common sense thinking as well as knowledge of physics. Every team will come away with smiles and good memories regardless of how well they master the particular challenge.

Order of Magnitude Quiz (Fermi Questions)

Arrive at a reasonable approximation for the value of a complex situation with very little to no information available to directly compute the answer. In this quiz, the contestants will need to quickly make assumptions for values to use in simple calculations in order to arrive at the "correct" answer, stated as the power of ten of the number that fits the accepted value.

Teams will receive 7 questions to complete within 15 minutes. The teams can divide the work in any way they see fit, but only one answer per question per team will be accepted. Answers will be judged according to how many orders of magnitude the team's answer is from the judge's solution. The lowest score wins -- 0 points awarded for the answer accepted by the panel of judges, with 1 point scored per order of magnitude from the accepted value.

Examples of Order-of-Magnitude Quiz questions include: