User:MindstormsKid/Power Puzzle

Power Puzzle was the ninth FIRST LEGO League Challenge. It dealt with the use of energy. Approximately 109,410 children and 10,941 teams participated.

FIRST LEGO League
FIRST Lego League (also known by its acronym FLL) is a competition for elementary and middle school students (ages 9-14, 9-16 in Europe), arranged by the FIRST organization. The competition revolves around making Lego robots to complete many tasks. Each year the contest focuses on a different topic related to the sciences. Each challenge within the competition then revolves around that theme. The students then work out solutions to the various problems that they are given and meet for regional tournaments to share their knowledge and show off their ideas.

Project
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Missions
A mission is a task, which a robot built and programmed by the team, can perform to gain points. In each challenge, there is a certain number of missions. At a tournament, teams try to get as many missions as they can completed in two and a half minutes. When the time is up, the referees look at the field and decide how many points the team got. Since points are given after the time is up, teams can do the missions in any order. There are various missions, consisting of different tasks surrounding the topic. The missions include:


 * Roof Solar Panel
 * Move the Roof Solar Panel from base onto the roof of the house by the sea for 15 points. The Solar Panel starts in base.


 * Personal Vehicle Choice
 * Move the Car to the house by the sea's property and move the Truck from the house to the parking lot or farm for 25 points, plus 3 Oil Barrels (30 points). The Car starts in base.


 * Hydro-Dam
 * Place the Dam so it is touching both banks of any river section east of Base for 15 points. The Dam must be upright. When the match is over, the referee places (or projects) the Flood upstream of the Dam to see if it is touching a house. If any part of the Dam or Flood is touching a house, teams lose 10 points. The Dam starts in base.


 * Wind Turbines
 * Move the Wind Turbines to any white area not directly outside base for 15 points each (there are two). The Wind Turbines start in base and must be upright.


 * Grid Connection
 * Move the Power Lines so they are touching the white of the Power Plant’s property and the white of surrounding communities. The Power Lines must be upright. Communities connected to the Power Plant’s property in this way are worth 5 points each. Each connected community that is in turn touching a scoring Hydro-Dam or scoring Wind Turbine is worth an added 5 points (30 points max). The Power Lines start in base.


 * Solar Power Satellite
 * Lower one of the Satellite’s panels for 15 points. If a team's robot is the first to do this, five points are added.


 * Wave Turbine


 * Coal Mining


 * Oil Drilling


 * Corn Harvest and Processing


 * Uranium Mining


 * Tree Planting


 * Power Plant Supply

Oil Barrels of either color are worth 10 points each in base as unused reserves, but... If you rescue the robot while there are Oil Barrels in Base, the referee takes one away so it does not score. White will be taken before red. If there are no Oil Barrels in Base at the time of the rescue, there is no loss. There is a single maximum 40 point deduction if any Oil Barrel from anywhere is touching any water or property with a house.

The parking lot is designated as a storage area with respect to the Housekeeping rule, so the team is allowed to move objects to and from the parking lot by hand for storage only. The robot is allowed to enter and exit the parking lot, but it is not allowed to make contact with scoring objects nor strategic objects there.

A fairness bonus is applied to the non-perfect raw scores earned by teams who are still using the RCX platform so that similar amounts of effort are reflected by similar scores as follows: Every 5 raw points up to 100 are worth 8 points. Raw scores from 105 to 325 get 60 points added. Raw scores from 330 to 395 are replaced by scores of 386 to 399.