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Flavorflav- can you elaborate? I don't understand your opinion about my theory necessitating parallel tasks. I do agree that it is necessary to access energy along the way, but if that energy is released by a previous transfer I do not agree that it is a parallel task, however I wouldn't, under my theory, believe it to be scored as a transfer. e.g. marble hits lever to mix reactants and create a gas, inflating a balloon and triggering another transfer. I would score that for C-M but not M-C-M, which I know is the more general debate we're having, but I'm not sure why you would call that a parallel task under my theory.

Store bought clocks are allowed this year, aren't they?

olympiaddict wrote:Flavorflav- can you elaborate? I don't understand your opinion about my theory necessitating parallel tasks. I do agree that it is necessary to access energy along the way, but if that energy is released by a previous transfer I do not agree that it is a parallel task, however I wouldn't, under my theory, believe it to be scored as a transfer. e.g. marble hits lever to mix reactants and create a gas, inflating a balloon and triggering another transfer. I would score that for C-M but not M-C-M, which I know is the more general debate we're having, but I'm not sure why you would call that a parallel task under my theory.

Take a closer look at your example. The mechanical energy of the marble hits the switch and is dissipated. Chemical energy, coming from an outside source and stored long before your device began its operation is released, inflating the balloon. There is a direct transfer from chemical to mechanical in the balloon but not from the marble to the chemicals, so if you are thinking about it in terms of energy the marble is a dead end and the chemical energy entering the chain is parallel. Using the trigger model, which is the way Mission has historically been done, you would score M-C-M for your example and there is no dead-ending.
I'm going to suggest that we have beaten this horse enough for a while, so we might as well wait for the clarification. One last thought: even if, in fact, there is no viable way to do chemical --> electrical (which I do not believe, BTW) that would not be an argument in favor of any particular interpretation. Nothing in the rules guarantees that every possible transfer is actually achievable.

fair enough, I agree we should put the trigger-conversion conversation to bed for now.

On the other hand, I do not agree about a store-bought battery not counting for a conversion. I don't see any difference between wiring a store-bought battery for C-E and wiring a storebought LED for E-EM. They're essentially the same, and I would argue that a photosensor is extremely similar as well, so is a candle. What makes a battery special?

Flavorflav wrote:so if you are thinking about it in terms of energy the marble is a dead end and the chemical energy entering the chain is parallel.

Sorry but I want to get my point in here. I see where this comes from, but here's the issue. If this is true, then the only energy allowed in the device is from the initial task, I.e the kinetic energy of the falling mixture of stuff. Not only does that energy change, which makes it hard to predict how much energy there is, but it's not much energy to begin with. Let's assume that you drop the mix from 15cm, reasonable, since it has to be fast and to do the bonus you need to get them all in a target. I think the materials would mass about 250g total, so that gives an initial starting energy of .3675 joules. I think lighting the final light for 1 second is probably good, and figuring that you use an LED that's about 20mW, over 1 second it become .02 joules. That's a required efficiency of 5.44%. Now, if you do all 15 transfers each transfer would need to be 82% effcienct (the 15th root of .0544). I haven't done the event, but the sounds like an almost impossible transfer effciency, especially to consistently attain that over every run and through 15 transfers. To me a more reasonable effciency is 30% to achieve on average, which would limit you to 2 transfers. (Log with base .0544 of .3 is 2.44).

That's the long reason why I can't believe that transfers are scored and new energy sources are not allowed. Now, what I do think is that transfers are scored and something like a marble hitting a switch is allowed but unscored. I can't see another way to run the machine.

I agree that it is impossible to build a device that actually transfers the energy contained in this starting task more than a couple of times. What I do not understand is how you can see that and still not give up on the notion that you can only score actual, literal transfer of energy. As I and many others have said, nearly identical language was used for many years in Mission, and as far as I know mechanical energy triggering a release of electrical energy from a commercial battery always scored as M -> E , not C -> E. It is possible that the Powers that Be really meant something totally new and will disagree with me, but I seriously doubt it.

olympiaddict wrote:fair enough, I agree we should put the trigger-conversion conversation to bed for now.

On the other hand, I do not agree about a store-bought battery not counting for a conversion. I don't see any difference between wiring a store-bought battery for C-E and wiring a storebought LED for E-EM. They're essentially the same, and I would argue that a photosensor is extremely similar as well, so is a candle. What makes a battery special?

In a LED, you input electricity and get out EM; in a photosensor, you input light and get out electricity. You do not input chemical energy into a battery, you close a switch. Whatever energy you use to close the switch is your input, and your output is whatever the current does. You are trying to get two transfers for a single commercial component, and that is not going to fly with me.

A better question, to me at least, is this: if the switch lets the battery heat nichrome, can you score that as M -> E -> T if there's a little copper wire in between?

Flavorflav wrote:In a LED, you input electricity and get out EM; in a photosensor, you input light and get out electricity. You do not input chemical energy into a battery, you close a switch. Whatever energy you use to close the switch is your input, and your output is whatever the current does. You are trying to get two transfers for a single commercial component, and that is not going to fly with me.

By this argument, you could say that pressing a switch to turn on a light is just mechanical -> EMS, because you are inputting mechanical energy and getting out light energy, and frankly I think to say that would be ridiculous.

Anyway, all of this is speculation and largely pointless...I'm just going to leave this conversation behind until we see some actual clarifications about it.

Do the 1 pint containers have to be empty, or can they contain things to help sort the mixture? e.g. a magnet.

Can someone post a link to the website that Chalker talked about the laser guidelines? Much appreciated!

Cheese_Muffin_Man wrote:Can someone post a link to the website that Chalker talked about the laser guidelines? Much appreciated!

http://www.soinc.org/lasers