Office Chair Long Jump

Introduction

This is the event you've all been training for. Your chance to show off your chair sitting muscules, muscules you've been training since your first day at school. All you have to do is to sit down in an office chair and propell yourself forward.

The Concept

You know the long jump. You've seen it on TV while watching the (other) Olympics. The people run really fast down a long runway, propel themselves into the sky and land (hopefully) feet-first into a big sand pit. Well, this is the CSAIL Lab and we like to do things a bit differently here. There aren't any sand pits in the building, but there are large flat open areas. We can't jump very well, but we sure do get around on our office chairs. Hence, the CSAIL Lab version of the long jump is the Office Chair Long Jump.

Competitors will propel themselves down a runway using their feet or whatever other appendages or powers they possess. Before they get to the end of the runway, they will stop propelling themselves and coast to a stop. The distance of their "jump" will be their score.

The Rules

• Each competitor will be allowed two "jumps" with the longer distance counting for the final rankings.
• Each competitor must have his or her rear (both cheeks!) firmly planted in the seat of the chair during the "jump." Not having both cheeks on the chair before crossing the line is a fault (see below). Locomotion may be provided in (more-or-less) any manner so long as this rule is observed.
• Distance is measured as the shortest distance from the line to the nearest part of the chair.
• Each competitor is allowed a single "fault." Two faults ends a competitor's turn with no further scores for that competitor being allowed. Faults include: touching the ground once the chair has passed the line, tipping over the chair on the runway, or hitting a wall on the runway.
• The chairs will be selected by the commissioner, and will hopefully be of the same five-legged variety we've used in the past few years.
• Helmets are optional.
• In the event of broken chairs, bad timing, reckless behavior, or natural disasters caused, the judgment of the commissioner will prevail.

Scoring

Each competitor will receive a score equal to the distance of his/her best "jump." Each team will be given a score equal to the sum of all the scores received by team members. Upper and lower bounds will be placed on individual competitor scores in order to encourage participation (for example, 1 foot=10 points, 2247 feet=30 points). Extra points for wearing team colors. Hence, a team can rack up a large score simply by having many team members participate.