Scioly.org

How is one made? What configurations are used often that are effective? Where are the rules and any other general information for someone completely new to the event?

Some general suggestions: Keep it simple. Processes involving increasing entropy and decreases potential energy can be more reliable (e.g. drop a ball rather than pick up a ball).

Rules may vary greatly from year to year. Check with your coach for this year's event rules.

Try a Google Images search for
mission possible science olympiad 2016
at https://www.google.com/imghp?hl=en

You'll get the idea. And read the rules. Several times.

bernard wrote:Some general suggestions: Keep it simple. Processes involving increasing entropy and decreases potential energy can be more reliable (e.g. drop a ball rather than pick up a ball).

Rules may vary greatly from year to year. Check with your coach for this year's event rules.

Along with what bernard said about keeping it simple, make sure you test every part individually and make sure it works every time before integrating with the rest of system. And once integrated, test the integration to make sure it always works. If you have 10 parts and each part works 9 out of 10 times, the chances of the entire device working from start to stop is 35%.

Including what everyone said above, I would say to make sure that your starting and ending task work almost all the time with no touches because these are worth the most points. I would also start out with the largest possible dimensions and then cut down as far as you can afterwards. This is because you might need more space if you start very small and then you would need to restart.

yes, what I did was do the starting and ending task first. then I worked from the back and my partner worked from the front.

A bit late, but a good plan is to work backwards so you know that at least your last transfer can be successful, and you can start from the bottom and work your way to the top of the device.