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Re: Steam
Adrian,
There is a clause in the MicroMouse rules against damaging the maze,
crawling over the walls (not specificly flying over them) and no combustion
engines are allowed. This may indirectly preclude steam engines. It
does not preclude CO2 or pre-loading a ballon with "steam" or presurized
air, and running off of that? Circular saws on the front of the mouse are
also highly discouraged, no matter how effective they may be. ;-)
John
At 04:39 PM 6/29/00 +0100, A Johnstone wrote:
>
>I think a non-polluting steam engine would be possible - those early
>steam locos used on the Metropolitan railway had condenser bells over the
>smoke stack which collected most of the steam and coal smoke. One can run
>small engines off of those little lighter tablets which burn completely
>clean. Then we just need to collect the waste steam.
>
>Possibly for the duration of a run, one might get away with a large
>balloon in which to collect the output from the cylinder. The only
>problem is that this would then constitute a hot air balloon, so the mouse
>might take off.
>
>Come to think of it, have we put a clause in the rules requiring the mouse
>to stay in contact with the floor of the maze? Surely the fastest way to
>get to the centre would just be to fly up and over in a straight line?
>
> Adrian
>
>Dr Adrian Johnstone, Senior Lecturer in Computing, Computer Science Dep,
>Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, Surrey, TW20 0EX, England.
>Email a.johnstone@rhbnc.ac.uk Tel:+44(0)1784 443425 Fax:+44(0)1784 439786
>
>
>
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