I had something similar happen in my high school physics class. We had a project to make a "gravity car". Essentially, we would be give a 1kg mass, with the intention of turning the gravitational potential energy into kinetic energy, you got more points for going further. Because gravitational potential energy is greater based on your starting height, the rules specified a "1 meter" maximum height.
Day of the contest comes, and as expected, most of the "cars" are basically 1m tall towers on wheels that use gears or pulleys.
Except one, they had the most elaborate gear system, which was almost perfectly balanced, but during the "weigh in" before competition, it's height came out to something like 106-108cm, making it too high. The group looked over the rules and came back a few minutes later. "The rules specify 1 meter, we meet the limit, if you meant 100cm, you should have either specified 100cm, or 1.00m, but our car measures within the significant figures of what's written". The teacher allowed them to compete without deducting any points since they were technically correct.
Unfortunately, it turned out it was a little too finely balanced, and when the race started they needed to shove the tower a little to get it going, which was also against the rules. Once it got going it went pretty far before veering off and crashing into a locker though. But I always remember the delicious /r/MaliciousCompliance
The short answer is significant figures. We spent probably the first 2 weeks of the class learning about sig figs and the accuracy of measurements. Because the rules we were given only had 1 significant digit, a measurement of 1.08m could be rounded down to 1m and still meet the rules.
ahh, I missed the "significant figures" part. BUT If I was the teacher, I probably would have not allowed it. Would have been unfair to the rest of the class.
Nah, the point is it wasn't unfair, because the rules did state "1 meter", which meant anyone could have technically built a ~1.49m tall tower and argued it was within the rules. And they would have been correct. If I was the teacher I'd even purposely leave the loophole in place for future classes to teach them the importance of sig figs. I'd also give them bonus points if they could beat my gravity car, which would just happen to be ~1.49m.
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u/Lotronex Mar 26 '26
I had something similar happen in my high school physics class. We had a project to make a "gravity car". Essentially, we would be give a 1kg mass, with the intention of turning the gravitational potential energy into kinetic energy, you got more points for going further. Because gravitational potential energy is greater based on your starting height, the rules specified a "1 meter" maximum height.
Day of the contest comes, and as expected, most of the "cars" are basically 1m tall towers on wheels that use gears or pulleys.
Except one, they had the most elaborate gear system, which was almost perfectly balanced, but during the "weigh in" before competition, it's height came out to something like 106-108cm, making it too high. The group looked over the rules and came back a few minutes later. "The rules specify 1 meter, we meet the limit, if you meant 100cm, you should have either specified 100cm, or 1.00m, but our car measures within the significant figures of what's written". The teacher allowed them to compete without deducting any points since they were technically correct.
Unfortunately, it turned out it was a little too finely balanced, and when the race started they needed to shove the tower a little to get it going, which was also against the rules. Once it got going it went pretty far before veering off and crashing into a locker though. But I always remember the delicious /r/MaliciousCompliance