Maze vs. Labyrinth

What is the difference between a maze and a labyrinth?

A labyrinth has a single through-route with twists and turns but without branches. It is not designed to be difficult to navigate. It may be long but there is only one path. Therefore, it is known as a unicursal maze. A labyrinth has only one entrance that also serves as the exit. There is just one path from the entrance to the center. Getting lost in a labyrinth is almost impossible. All a person would have to do is turn around and keep walking until they reach the entrance/exit again.

A maze on the other hand is a confusing pathway that has many branches, choices of path and dead-ends. A maze is a tour puzzle and can be designed with various levels of difficulty and complexity. It can have pathways that go over and under each other, obstacles that must be moved to continue on paths, teleports, symbols, and many other variations that make a maze complex and interesting. A maze can also have one entry and exit or multiple entry and exit points.

Mazes and labyrinths can be traced back to Greek mythology and Paganism, where they were regarded as mystical. Some labyrinths have a spiritual significance. They signify the complex and long path to reach God. Mazes were often used as a place to run off to in secrecy. Lovers would often pick spots in a maze where they could meet in an isolated area. They were also used for defense to keep out unwelcome visitors and to confuse enemies. It wasn't until recently that mazes were made for fun puzzling adventures.

So what is the bottom line?

Mazes were created to confuse and disorient you where as labyrinths were created with the purpose of taking nice, long, and pleasant walks 

After the Break

This week has been mellow in terms of projects. After many congratulatories for our 2nd place win at the robotics competition, we found that we no longer had a purpose in the club. Josh decided that we should build water/soda bottle rocket launchers and water boats to race in the pond. As you can probably tell, my programming skills will be of little use for the rest of the semester. Therefore, my coding career has come to a stand still.

I was sent out to find a design for the water rockets that will keep possible cases of injuries to a minimum.  The water rockets will launch due to a build up of pressure within the bottle. When a certain level of pressure is reached, the water is forced out causing the bottle to shoot up. Josh wants a launcher that will automatically shoot off after a certain amount of pressure has been reached. This however leads to a shorter height and fly time. I, along with the rest of the club members, will most likely want to build a rocket where we control when the rocket shoots. We could then increase the pressure as high as we wanted as long as the bottle did not explode. This allows for much higher launch heights. Of course, it also increases the chance of pressure induced explosion harming a (or multiple) member of the club. As such, Josh wishes to not build this version. To keep students from being harmed, he himself would have to pump up the bottle. As it turns out, his fear of explosions is greater than his desire to see a water/soda bottle being projected 70+ feet in the air. He has however decided to consider alternatives if the club can manage to build the safer version without any incidents. My guess is that we wont ever get to see a bottle launched up 70+ feet in the air at Phoenix College.  Oh well.

For the past week I have been working on mazes and honors projects. I have been writing a paper that describes the derivation, importance,  and impact of Newton's universal law of gravity. I never knew it was possible to write a paper on math and physics. So far, I have 6 out of 10 pages single spaced. Wish me luck. Next week is all about mazes. I will keep you posted.

ASU is A Go Go

Alright.

So, as much as I was secretly hoping for the ASU competition to fall through so that we would not be destroyed, they replied with a confirmation. To top that off, we will be going against Scottsdale Community College and ASU. To top that off further, we will also be going up against Embry Riddle. I DO NOT want to be destroyed by them. They will secretly hold it against us for years to come. I keep being told that this will be "a great learning experience." I already know that we will be destroyed. There is nothing to learn if I'm already aware of it. Secondly, you learn nothing from being annihilated. It just leaves an awful failure feeling in the end. As such, I am super nervous. Even more so because I am being peer and mentor pressured into attending the competition. I am not even allowed to contemplate on my own. The only comfort I have is that our t-shirts will be the most awesome shirts at the competition.

Now to recap on this week:
1 robot is officialy in working condition. Woo! It is stable the buttons and motors work. Everythings okay. I almost cried. The other robot however is in a half alive state. It can drive if it wanted to and it has potential. But is it anywhere near proper operating condition? No, not really. As the last day comes upon us, I really wonder if we can make this happen. This will have to be a cooperative effort, which we are not the best at. I wish I could tell you guys more. However the secrecy factor prevents me from saying much of what has gone on. Tune in next week to hear the results of our match. Send positive thoughts!

Next week I'll be working on mazes.

I Apologize

In all honesty I completely forgot to post for the last two weeks. I have, however, been making tremendous progress in robotics. I set out to design a lift for our robot. Without mentioning any specifics, I can say that my first design was thrown away. I was a little sad but it wasn’t as versatile as we needed to be. Plus, we only had 15 inches height wise to work with. So, I scrapped that idea and decided to move onto another lift design.
 

This did not come easily. Because I am new to the vex world, I had absolutely no idea of where the possibilities of lifts lie. I turned to the internet and, with Josh's help, found a variety of lift ideas. Again I can't provide details but after a whopping 6 hours of work, I had a lift. I was very proud of my accomplishment. However, after going to robotics club I found that my lift was extremely difficult to mount to a chassis. On top of that, I had already used up the allotted 15 inches for length. This makes it very hard to build the rest of the robot. So, we decided that building a new chassis around the lift would be best.
 

That is my most significant accomplishment over the past 2 weeks. I also helped fortify our other robot but in the end, we took it all down and restructured it. It has been frustrating.  The most frustrating event of all however is that ASU has yet to co tact us confirming the competition. This means that my hard work may have all been for naught. I am sad.
 

Also, my progress with the mazes has come to a halt. I have been doing nothing but building this whole time so I suppose I'll have time if ASU falls through.

This is actually a maze