newsletter January 2020
QUIZ Text: Lars van der Lee Photo: Johan Ludvig Holst
With several hundred Formula Student teams registered around the world, the competition for slots at competition is hard! For the EV class, most competitions have around 30-40 slots, for DV some only have 10! This is where the Quiz comes into the picture. The word Quiz, doesn’t really do the process justice. Yes, we are served between 10 and 15 questions, but they are not your general trivia questions from the pub. Instead, they can contain anything from the category: “Rules and engineering knowledge”. This includes, but is not limited to: Electronic circuits, material science, score calculations, beam theory, Formula Student rules and vehicle dynamics. Each competition has a slightly different format to the quiz-scoring, but the overall concept results in the teams
with the fewest errors in the shortest amount of time are given a competition slot. To ensure that we have the best possible chance to get all competitions confirmed for the summer, we have to practice. Practice a lot! For quiz practice, the team was split into two groups. The quiz crew will practice for the quizzes, while the remaining members support the quiz crew in other tasks. This to ensure we still meet our deadlines. Race car development has to continue, even though there are quizzes. During January, there are daily quiz-practice sessions. Every evening, from 17-19, we all work together to become experts in the rules and all other fields we can be tested in. Using old exams, reading the rules, solving quizzes from earlier years etc. It is very similar to our exam period actually! Except we have to study
for 10 types of exams at the same time. After a few days of practicing in smaller groups, we start simulating real quizzes. During an official registration quiz, the questions appear on the blackboard. Therefore communication and teamwork is key to ensure that all questions are solved correctly, and fast. This requires practice, and development of some routines. For example: We only deliver an answer if two members have found the same answer independently.
This season, the 31st of January is the big quiz-day. This day is filled with quizzes, the first starting at 09:00, and the last starting at 19:00. On this day, the smallest mistake can mean we don’t have a competition to attend during the summer. The evening before, will be one of very few evenings where the office is quite. Everyone has to be fit for fight, ready to achieve the goal: Qualify for all the competition slots we want for the summer!
GIVE IT A TRY YOURSELF!
1. A buckling analysis of a rod is run using 2 different meshes. Which of the following statements is true? A. The critical load will be higher in the analysis with the coarser mesh B. The mesh does not influence the value of the critical load C. The critical load will be higher in the analysis with the more refined mesh 2. What is the fastest speed a car can drive around a corner with a 100 m radius? A. 80 km/h B. 100 km/h C. 14 m/s D. 2 m/s E. 5 m/s F. Not enough information provided 3. What color is the stripe of the blue cones found in the Driverless competi-
tion? A. Orange B. Gray C. Yellow D. Black E. White F. Green 4. A tightly wound solenoid is 15 cm long, has 350 windings, leads a current of 3,0 A and has an aluminum core with a magnetic susceptibility x = 2, 3 ¡ 10^-5. If you ignore end effects, you will find that the magnetic flux density in the center is about: A. 8.80 mA/m B. 0.0 mT C. 7000 mT D. 202 mA/m E. 88 mT F. 8.80 mT
1:A, 2:C, 3:E, 4:F
Below you can find some of the questions we could encounter during the quizzes. Give them a try! The answers can be found on the bottom.
SOFTWARE CREW AT REVOLVE NTNU Text: Marcus Henriksbø Photo: Marion Christine Løkkevig
Each month we will do an article about one of the groups in our team, so that you can all get to know them better!
before the competitions. Our analysis software is heavily used, to monitor and test different adjustments on the car.
Say hi to this month’s group: The Software Crew!
What have we done in January? At the start of the year, we had an intense January workshop where we in Software progressed very well. Some of our main tasks were the rewrite of our graph-analysis plugin, called “Line Graph”. The IT work on Revolve’s SAP Digital Twin project has also started. We also worked on a new communication plugin, which handles the transfer of specified messages between the electronics on the car and our analysis software, called “MessageWriter”. There has also been made progress on the UI of our software, where the goal is to make the interface more intuitive to navigate through, no easy task.
The software crew is the makers of different software solutions that support our vehicles and people throughout the processes of planning, building and testing. The crew is mainly focusing on the further development of Analyze, a state of the art analysis program. During the autumn semester, they worked through requested changes for functionality and UI in Revolve Analyze in addition to a big rewrite of the Line Graph plugin. Analyze is used for data visualization and real-time monitoring for all gathered sensor data from our vehicles. As part of the Software team, you play an important role in the testing season,
THE MEMBERS Marcus Henriksbø Marcus is the guy with the longest passport name (in english), tied with Filip. “As group leader you work somewhat on everything. Analyze, the web projects and too often excel sheets and mail”. In January he worked on getting the last of the new Linegraph rewritten, design changes for UI and started with the IT work on the SAP Digital Twin project. His hobbies are ping pong, noodles and adequate amounts of sleep. Filip Jacobsen Filip is the guy with the longest surname, making it difficult to fit all his characters into various forms. Filip is dedicated to his role in the frontend department, and is the main contributor to the web development, that is Vault Revolve, a server hosting multiple web applications. This includes a quiz system, used by the team for practicing the grand qualification exams, that Formula Student hosts. It also includes a test-log system used during track-run practices and workshop sessions. His hobby is redstone in Minecraft and working on the Analyze software. His work in Analyze revolves logic, similar to how redstone works, but mostly implementing issues that are extracted from usability tests, held every month or so. He also likes to gather data from the tests for nice metrics that can visualize how the usability of the program improves. What Filip quotes as his most favourable experience from working in Revolve: “I like the problem solving aspect. Finding better solutions to existing functionality is much enjoyable”
Magnus Wiik Magnus is the guy with the shortest surname of the group, tied with Vegard. He started in the software team working with frontend, improving the visuals to make our analysis software prettier and more intuitive. He has collaborated with Filip on some of the user-testing, to gain feedback from the members who will work with Analyze during the development of the car. Now he is working on the backend of Analyze, developing plugins which handles communication between the car and Analyze. However, one of the most important goals he has set for this semester, is to become the ping pong champion of Revolve. To obtain such power, he must beat his arch-nemesis, Petter.
Petter Jones Gudbrandsen Petter (very ordinary name), together with Dag and Vegard, spent the autumn rewriting the line graphing plugin. This year he will be responsible for the communication with the car together with Magnus. Their ping pong relationship may be tense, but when work starts it is all converted to extreme efficiency.
Vegard Skui Vegard is the guy who was too late to come up with a name fact. He spent the fall semester working on Lime Graph and nagging the team about code quality, and will continue this going forwards. At the ping-pong table, he doesn’t impress much, and when he released the ranking system he ended up at the bottom within the first day. He still uses that as proof that it’s not rigged.
Dag Økland Is the guy with the shortest first name in the group. This autumn he has collaborated with Petter and Vegard to rewrite the line graphing plugin. This year he will mainly focus on further development on Analyze. He claims that his biggest hobby is outdoor recreation, however his most ambitious expedition last semester was a bike ride from the office to Moholt studentby.
NEW YEARS OFFICE PARTY Text: Rasmus Søvik Illustration: Jeeviga Gunathasan
Every year after the January workshop the organisation takes a well deserved break together. Just to relax and socialize before we enter production phase. This year’s Office Party happened at Frimurerlogen in Trondheim.
traditional awards were announced. This year’s Duo, Couch Potato, Meme Lord, Meme, Office Rat, Big spender, Joy bringer, Best dressed and Lasaron were all revealed. All the winners got gold medals for their hard work and good effort.
We started off with pre-parties. The team were divided into random groups so everyone could mingle with different people that they usually don’t work with. After pre-partying we all met at Frimurerlogen where the traditional welcome speech was held and food was served. We were very happy with the roast veal that 2kokker had provided us with. Shout-out to them, the food was excellent! After the meal, there were some intense beer-pong matches going on at the different tables. There were also a dance floor with awesome disco lights and some good speakers. Thank you to Frimurerlogen for providing everything to us. Later that evening the long anticipated
I also want to bring a thanks to our DJ’s: JP, Kristoffer and Sunberg. They created a wonderful atmosphere. The night went along with great moves and great speeches. Sondre in the suspension group had a speech about all the wonderful women we have on this team, while Clara and Helena at Monocoque group had a speech where they roasted all the men. We might have deserved that, but it was still entertaining. The rest of the night was filled with laughter and love. All in all, it was a successful night - till we woke up with a hangover the next day right before quiz practice. Work hard, play hard.