General Mission Possible

[hogger]

Now that our season is done, I just want to say thank you to everyone who took the time to answer questions and helped clarified things on this board (especially both of the Chalkers). Your help and thoughtful exchanges are greatly appreciated.

[ttboy99]

My group and I did pretty well at regionals with this event (5th), but are not getting a lot of possible points because it runs too fast, only 7 or 8 seconds. Any ideas on how to slow it down before states?

use a rack and pinion. We have made ours adjustable so it can take up to 1 and a half minutes just for that task.

We already have that task in, but in needs to be fast to be effective. Thanks anyways!

[Orchdork]

Would anyone consider a score in the range of 850-950 a good competitive score for regionals?

Yes that is a good score for regionals. What place did you get?

14th because to make a long story short our mousetraps went off early.

thats ok... we want to incorporate a mouse trap but we don't know where. Which task did you use a mouse trap for?

[Orchdork]

What score did you get for regionals? We got about 567

[Flavorflav]

A question for the experienced supervisors out there: at regionals on Saturday, a student's TSL said that their lever for task C was supposed to pull a string, then as an separate unscored task had the string activate a mousetrap. During their run the mousetrap failed to activate, so I did not score the lever. The student argued that since the lever moved, it pulled the string and completed the task as described in the TSL. They won anyway so I did not need to revisit my judgment, but I am curious as to what you all think.

Unofficially of course, I don't see how pulling a string requires an IMA greater than 1 for task c... so the conditions of task c weren't met.

I should have noted that there were masses on the lever so that an IMA of greater than one was required for any movement. The question is really this: can a student define "the next action" simply as pulling a string, and then have "string activates mousetrap" as a separate unscored task? It seems clear that the TSL was constructed that way because they had some difficulty activating the trap directly and were trying to get the lever in anyway, which I thought was not in the spirit of the rules.

[kittybug65]

Our team got a 471 for regionals. not great, but I only had three week to turn the previous teams horrid wreck (no kidding, at invitationals it got -15 points. i didn't know you could even get negative points!) into something that worked.

[kittybug65]

My group and I did pretty well at regionals with this event (5th), but are not getting a lot of possible points because it runs too fast, only 7 or 8 seconds. Any ideas on how to slow it down before states?

use a rack and pinion. We have made ours adjustable so it can take up to 1 and a half minutes just for that task.

We already have that task in, but in needs to be fast to be effective. Thanks anyways!

That's better than ours, ours runs for thee seconds. yeah, we're working on that...

[Cheese_Muffin_Man]

What's the maximum height anyone has lifted the special task?

[Orchdork]

What's the maximum height anyone has lifted the special task?

Well that will change depending how heavy the object weighs.

[Cheese_Muffin_Man]

What's the maximum height anyone has lifted the special task?

Well that will change depending how heavy the object weighs.

no, i was just wondering what height everyone was getting.

[Kid Cobain]

PA SW regional competition was yesterday. Everyone was envious, looking at it, and some even took pictures of our mission, but thankfully my friend's mom knew that one could not do that. She "politely" asked them to delete the pictures. People!

[Cheese_Muffin_Man]

What defines an integrated circuit?

[chalker7]

What defines an integrated circuit?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_circuit

[Balsa Man]

PA SW regional competition was yesterday. Everyone was envious, looking at it, and some even took pictures of our mission, but thankfully my friend's mom knew that one could not do that. She "politely" asked them to delete the pictures. People!

I think this is the first time this year this has come up- it has come up in years past.
There is nothing in the rules - event rules or General Rules - that speaks to this; nothing that says it can't/shouldn't be done.
A competition is open to the public. Absent a rule/requirement/request from the event organizers/supervisors prohibiting photography/videoing, anyone is free to do so.
There are restrictions separating where competitors can be, and where spectators can be, and as long as a spectator follows these, there is no rule issue- whether they are watching, or photographing.
There are no.....intellectual property rights that prohibit anyone from photographing a device.
When you bring a device to a competition, in an event where spectators are allowed, what it looks like, how its built, how it works is open to public observation, limited only by restrictions on how close spectators can be to the device. Up to some level of detail (limited by allowable proximity), what's there and how it works is there to be seen. If in Mission-P -you see a better solution to a task than what you have, there is nothing to prohibit you from trying to implement your version in the next competition. That's how science and engineering works in the "real world"; the body of knowledge expands, it is built on the collective work of others.

A photo capturing a concept, from a distance, is not materially different than seeing and understanding the concept from observation. Implementing a concept is where the challenge is. If you're worried about some key .....cool idea, neat construction trick, etc., then part of the design problem is shielding it from observation.

[Kid Cobain]

PA SW regional competition was yesterday. Everyone was envious, looking at it, and some even took pictures of our mission, but thankfully my friend's mom knew that one could not do that. She "politely" asked them to delete the pictures. People!

I think this is the first time this year this has come up- it has come up in years past.
There is nothing in the rules - event rules or General Rules - that speaks to this; nothing that says it can't/shouldn't be done.
A competition is open to the public. Absent a rule/requirement/request from the event organizers/supervisors prohibiting photography/videoing, anyone is free to do so.
There are restrictions separating where competitors can be, and where spectators can be, and as long as a spectator follows these, there is no rule issue- whether they are watching, or photographing.
There are no.....intellectual property rights that prohibit anyone from photographing a device.
When you bring a device to a competition, in an event where spectators are allowed, what it looks like, how its built, how it works is open to public observation, limited only by restrictions on how close spectators can be to the device. Up to some level of detail (limited by allowable proximity), what's there and how it works is there to be seen. If in Mission-P -you see a better solution to a task than what you have, there is nothing to prohibit you from trying to implement your version in the next competition. That's how science and engineering works in the "real world"; the body of knowledge expands, it is built on the collective work of others.

A photo capturing a concept, from a distance, is not materially different than seeing and understanding the concept from observation. Implementing a concept is where the challenge is. If you're worried about some key .....cool idea, neat construction trick, etc., then part of the design problem is shielding it from observation.

But that is stealing our ideas