Debris Fields and Christmas Tree Strings

Well, the annual Engineering Event (because God forbid we should actually compete...) was today. I don't know which was worse, the boredom or the frustration. At SCDS, we prepare for a month, building rigs around a central theme (last year it was rack and pinion, this year, disaster response and cleanup). Our first project was to build, out of bamboo skewers, wheels, axels, and a salad container, a rig that would carry wiegh into wind. That worked out okay, to my suprise. But then came the bogey suspension project. We were given no central design on this one, so I was on my own. I managed to come up with a basic design, but but after that, my luck gave way. The triangle of bogey-ed wheels was off kilter, due to poor planning and techincal difficulties. Then I discovered that the mousetrap on the front outweighed the wheels in the back necessitating weights. So I added a tail to my rig, made out of metal. Finally, when I added the extention to the mousetrap, the front again outweiged the front. To compensate, I hung weights off the tail. What came out of all this was a piece of industrial-looking crap. But it could run over meter sticks and small twigs.
But once the contest started, mayhem and chaos reigned. People were running into my rig, but luckily there was plenty of tape onhand. One kid (Mr. Hissy Fit) had brought in a "modified" remote control monster truck. Apparently, he had added springs to make it have bogey suspension, but they had come off. So he was just running a remote controll car around, whining about how it wasn't cheating because we weren't actually competing...But I still think it was unsportsman-like. But I survived. And thanks to the awesome 4th and 5th grade science teacher (she teaches with the socratic method inn 4th and 5th grade, as well as being the most awesome person ever!), we all got little candy jack-up barges. CANDY CANES WOOT WOOT!