Espoo World

PreRequisites: None
Levels: Several.

Pokey swings around the Espoo world like Tarzan swinging on vines. Your job is take advantage of the dynamics of grabbing and releasing the “vines” in effort to launch Pokey through the springy spuCatcher. Once you develop your Tarzan skills and you are ready to challenge yourself, try picking up snowflakes along the way. In order for a snowflake to count,  you must pick it up and safely land in the spuCatcher.

Table of Links

• Reference Sheets
• Mechanics of Espoo World
• Buoyancy
• Parabolic Pokey Trajectory
• Thinking about Momentum and Energy
• Help! I can’t get it to work…

Reference Sheets

Here are the reference sheets from the SpuPilot. Click to see larger version.

 

 

Mechanics of Espoo World

This video summarizes basic locomotion dynamics in the Espoo World. Here are the buttons for your reference.

• Release Pokey: Button 8 (RT) or space bar.
• Display or Hide Parabolic Trajectory: Button 7 (LT) or key t.
• Set Target Location: Left mouse click.
• Target Auto Release: Hold button 6 (RB) or key r.
• Directional Auto Release: Hold D-Pad (left, right, up, down) or arrow keys.

You won’t be able to use the parabola until you express it mathematically. That’s the topic of the video below the next video.

Buoyancy

In some of the challenges, you’ll find that the projectile experiences a buoyancy force, in addition to its weight. This is described briefly in the video below.

Parabolic Pokey Trajectory

In order to launch Pokey with mathematical precision, you are going to need to derive an equation for its trajectory. This video outlines the idea. If you’re having difficulty deriving the equations, look here.

Thinking about Momentum and Energy

After you learn how to aim (with the parabola and the associated automatic release), you will need to figure out the best places to aim. When you get to the higher levels, you will find that you need to carefully aim the parabola so that Pokey links onto the next pin while losing minimal energy. You will need to conserve energy to successfully make it to the final spuCatcher. The problem we have to solve is presented in this short video.

To come up with an effective linking strategy, you will have to think about momentum and energy. In the linked PDF document, I step you through the process of analyzing angular momentum and energy of the linking process.

Help! I can’t get it to work…

Can’t figure something out? Here are some posts aimed at getting you on track.

• How do I derive mathematical expressions for the parabola coefficients.
• My parabola doesn’t hit the cross hair precisely. Why not?

Do you have other help topics you want to see? Ask on Piazza.