Access full information on the High School Design Competition page. Teams may direct additional questions to Engineering.Outreach.unbc.ca.
Teams
Contact us at Engineering.Outreach@unbc.ca if you are interested in participating in this year’s competition. In this inquiry, please indicate your school and the grade levels of students in the prospective team(s).
Certainly! Any team updates—such as team members, team names, or other information—can be made by contacting Engineering.Outreach@unbc.ca.
If your team needs to withdraw, simply contact us at Engineering.Outreach@unbc.ca. If the team’s advising teacher received an allowance cheque, all funds will need to be returned to the School of Engineering.
Apparatus Design
The apparatus should fit within the projected “box” of the 1m (W) x 1m (D) x 2m (H) size limitations, meaning no appendages or other elements of the apparatus (including the sandbag) can extend past those dimensions.
Any motorized/computerized components are acceptable, so long as they do not provide actual power to the launching mechanism (i.e., that energy must come from the falling sandbag). Other automations to the apparatus are fair game!
Modifications between rounds are allowed and expected, given the different challenges (i.e., accuracy vs. distance). However, the base mechanism of the apparatus should remain the same (i.e., the team cannot have 2 apparatuses for the different challenges). There will also be a fairly short turnaround between competition rounds, so teams will need to be able to make their modifications quickly.
Since design costs factor into the judging of designs, teams should account for all materials and expenses in the design process, including prototyping. For those sorts of prototype materials with nominal value, the team could factor them into the budget as items "donated" or "in kind" without worrying over precise costs. Otherwise, any other expenses related to the design of the apparatus should be fully accounted for in the team’s budget.
Sandbag
There are no strict size limitations for the sandbag itself, as long as the overall apparatus design adheres to the other size specifications and the sandbag is the sole source of energy for the mechanism.
The sandbag can theoretically be made of any material, though the fill should be sand. This is to ensure uniform density across teams' apparatuses, and to limit damage to the floor (and the bag itself!) when dropped to power the mechanism.
A single sandbag should be the sole source of energy in the mechanism, and therefore cannot be used as a trigger for another source of energy (i.e., a counterweight and/or additional sandbags).