Cool Computing 2013
The 2013 Cool Computing competition took place on Wednesday 20th February as part of the UCAS Open Day. Five undergraduates submitted entries and these were whittled down to a shortlist of two which were judged by 24 prospective students.
The winner was second-year student Jack Hopkins who presented his Vocem Stellarum graphics demonstration. This program simulates a planet and a moon mathematically, so that complex 3D images can be generated at run time without having to be designed by artists and stored on disc. His program is less than 100 kilobytes in size, i.e. about the size of one picture on Facebook.
The audience awarded Vocem Stellarum 15 out of 20 for coolness while Dave Cohen gave 8 out of 10 for academic relevance. Bob Vickers gave it 9 out of 10 for maintainability.
Jack is therefore this year's winner and wins the trophy plus a cheque for £120.
In second place was Dean Brown , a first-year student. His robot Colour Reactor was able to navigate a prepared course by reacting to coloured strips and to hand claps.
Colour Reactor was awarded 11 out of 20 for coolness, 6 out of 10 for academic relevance and 7 out of 10 for maintainability.
Dean wins a runner-up prizes of £60.
Entries which failed to make the short list were submitted by Atanas Penev, Rhys Camm and Simon Tennant. Many thanks and congratulations to all for their hard work and ingenuity.