Tasks & Scoring

[Primate]

What do you guys think the top missions at nationals will score?

Im assuming all the highest tasks, but how long should they take.

Also how much mass should we be lifting?

I think 5 seconds for everything but the sand timer/balloon is a reasonable assumption for a nationals-winning device. 15g is a good number to aim for.

[sj]

The 5 sec is fine but is it even possible to lift 15g consistently and quickly with a legally sized balloon?

If so can you tell me where we can get the right balloons and how big they should be?

[Primate]

The 5 sec is fine but is it even possible to lift 15g consistently and quickly with a legally sized balloon?

If so can you tell me where we can get the right balloons and how big they should be?

As big as they possibly can be, without obscuring the rest of your device. We only aimed for 10g, and our non-sandtimer tasks took a good 15 seconds, but that was enough to place third at NY states. If you want those last couple of places, though, you'll have to do whatever you can to lift more mass/shorten everything up.

[sj]

Well we have all the high tasks, 4 to 5 secs for all the tasks and then 45cm cube for balloon. We have yet to find balloons that big. Any ideas?

[Primate]

Well we have all the high tasks, 4 to 5 secs for all the tasks and then 45cm cube for balloon. We have yet to find balloons that big. Any ideas?

45cm is about 17-18 inches, which is actually a pretty common size for mylar balloons. Your local grocery stores should have plenty. Granted, they'll only be 17" in one direction, but that might still work for you.

You can also get extra big latex balloons.

[illusionist]

Well, we had our regional tournament today, and our MP was somewhat successful. We used 9 tasks, a 5.8 gram sign, and touched the device once. Our final score was 1010, which was enough to get us second in our region.

[aubrey048]

Well, we had our regional tournament today, and our MP was somewhat successful. We used 9 tasks, a 5.8 gram sign, and touched the device once. Our final score was 1010, which was enough to get us second in our region.

Congrats!

I've noticed that (since Mission Possible is such an INCREDIBLY hard event) not many schools bother with MP. We had a ridiculously hard time coming up with a machine last year, but we showed up at Regionals and owned the competition! We got a perfect score, but our MP was one of two out of . . . I don't know, TEN, that actually did all of the tasks unassisted. Our area has Mission Possible, but one could hardly call it a competition. Last year one team showed up with a device that did two tasks.

Schools tend to avoid Mission Possible because it's too risky. I wish people would take the leap and try this event. It was the hardest SO event I've ever been in, but very rewarding.

[illusionist]

Thank you!
I agree, last year our school tried it, and it kinda failed. So they gave up on it at regionals. It is definitely at least worth trying. I mean what can you lose??

[haverstall]

I wanted some clarification on something our team was thinking. Instead of running 10 normal tasks, we would run 11 tasks, but have one of the tasks (most likely our simple machine task, the third class lever) not count toward our score, because it works so well, but we want to get the other high-scoring tasks.

Is this a construction violation for more tasks, even if we don't count it toward our score, and also don't mention as a official task in our TSL?

[illusionist]

If you don't mention it in your TSL, and the task has something to do to cause the final task, I think it would be okay. For example, I have 3 instances of circular-to-linear, and as long as i don't mention them in the TSL, it is fine.