Science Forums 2

[CraigD]

Originally Posted by CraigD

OK, one ugly fix later (from an efficiency perspective – rather than restructure to prevent the bug, I added a few redundant calculations to fix it when it occurs – accuracy is unaffected), the gutter-skipping problem is fixed, so the sim time when the last pin collides with a gutter is about 113.68.

It’s past my bedtime. I’ll recheck the previous games tomorrow, and redo my statistics.

I made an additional code change to un-uglify it, eliminating the redundant calculations, posted the fixed code were the unfixed appeared in post #1, and reran it for the previous contest submissions. Programmers luck smiles upon me, but with irony, and there were no differences in any previous results except for the example I gave in post #1, which I fixed.

So, after 8 days, we are still waiting for a first winner! To summarize the competition so far:
(example, doesn’t count): ball mass 3, x=1.5, (h,v)=(.87,1) -> 2 left: 4, 10
Jay-qu: ball mass 3, x=4, (h,v)=(.25,1.5) -> 2 left: 4, 7
chendoh: ball mass 3, x=1.5, (h,v)=(.86,1.3) -> 6 left: 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8
chendoh: ball mass 3, x=5.5, (h,v)=(.2,1) -> 6 left: 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8
Janus: ball mass 3, x=3.5, (h,v)=(.3,1) -> 5 left: 3, 4, 6, 7, 8
Jay-qu: ball mass 3, x=4, (h,v)=(.2,1.5) -> 3 left: 4, 7, 10
freeztar: ball mass 3, x=4, (h,v)=(.13,1.5) -> 5 left: 3, 4, 6, 7, 10
freeztar: ball mass 3, x=5.1, (h,v)=(.01,2) -> 3 left: 2, 7, 8
Jay-qu: ball mass 1.75, x=4.5, (h,v)=(.2,3) -> 2 left: 7, 10
freeztar: ball mass 1.7, x=5.1, (h,v)=(.13,1.5) -> 5 left: 2, 4, 5, 6, 10
freeztar: ball mass 1.7, x=8, (h,v)=(.75,3) -> 10 left: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

So, YOU can still be the first to win this game of pure Newtonian mechanics – but only if you play. Bring your algebra and arithmetic, your iterative technique, dazzling intuition or blind luck, and play!