Conqueror of the Hill

CONQUEROR OF THE HILL is an annual engineering project for students at Hopewell Valley Central High School. Each year, students design and build a “robot” from common household items to complete a task on a plywood hill playing field. Teams compete in a head-to-head competition on the hill, incorporating both offensive and defensive strategies in the design of their robot.

Specific details about this year's competition are available on The Challenge page. 

There are 3 phases of this project:

• 1. Design Phase (INDIVIDUAL) - On your own, you will brainstorm ideas for drive and scoring mechanisms.  You will document your best ideas in a set of detailed schematics/sketches and written explanation of how you envision it will work.

  2. Build Phase (GROUP) - On a team of no more than 3 students*, you will construct ONE cart to compete in the competition. There are several (graded) check-ins along the way: one to demonstrate your drive mechanism works and another to demonstrate the functionality of your scoring mechanism.

  3. Competition Phase (GROUP) - No changes/improvements may be made to your cart at this stage.  Your team will compete in a double-elimination tournament.  Good Luck!

*NOTE: Each team member must be a current student at Hopewell.  However, your partners do not have to be in your class, have the same teacher, or even be taking physics. Students in Honors Physics, Physics, and Conceptual Physics may work together. 

Though you will be graded on each phase of the project per the rubrics posted on this site, you will NOT be graded on whether you win or lose during the competition. 

Starting on 2/6 we will have build sessions every Tuesday and Thursday from 3-4 pm in room 401.