AiS Challenge Team Interim
Team Number: 045
School Name: Manzano High School
Area of Science: Fire Math
Project Title: Fire Age (Name Pending)
Fire, of the elements, is perhaps the most difficult to
explain. Considering this, fires primary action is the destruction of the
other four elements. Fire evaporates water, torches earth, burns wood, and
melts metal. This, typically, is all that fire can or will do. Though,
fire can be much more destructive; for instance: Fire will start small,
but if not contained will spread. The spreading fire will cover more area
in time. This fire can eventually spread far enough to become a 'fire of
mass destruction,' burning the majority population of a forest, or large
sections of buildings. Fortunately local fire departments can send out
'troops' to contain the fire with force. But unfortunately, often, this
does not occur within enough time to force out the fire so easily. Thusly,
more men are sent out from more sides, water is dumped onto the fire from
above in hope of extinguishing it.
The purpose of our project is to calculate the rate fire
spreads. We intend to take it to levels higher then that, including the
altitude, climate, growth in the area, and other information on the area.
Our final project should include a simulation based off of user input. The
output will include the algorithmic results along with the time and
location of the inputted fire. If this is concluded with enough time, we
wish to include a GUI system that will be based off of the same user
input, but a topographical map as well.
This simulation will be difficult to create. There are
many algorithms that will need to be calculated before anything else can
be done. This is the current state we are in. We are collecting data that
will be used in our final simulation. Some of this data is very hard to
gather for the simple reason that testing of fire is not possible by any
standard means. We have previously learnt that not many people have put
effort into studying fire as it occurs, and starting a massive fire for
studying it would result in severe punishment. Aside from this, there is a
large amount of chaos math involved.
We do realize that this is a very difficult project. We
decided to do such a difficult project because not only are we both
already very skilled in multiple programming languages and math, but it is
something that we have not seen before. More specifically between the two
of us we are familiar with high levels of algebra and above, and the
languages: C++, Visual Basic, Assembly, and some others that may not be
used as highly in this project. The majority of the coding should be in
C++, with the high levels of math in assembly. If we get as far as we hope
to we will use Visual Basic for the GUI.
We at this time have not had any help from mentors.
However, we have spent many hours in front of computers doing research. So
we at this time would like to thank the miscellaneous small sites with
little bits of information that have or will prove useful. Also the
Manzano computers with provided high-speed Internet access. And, what has
probably proven to be most useful, caffeine, for allowing us to remain
conscious far into the night.
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