Beat a Bunny Contest


Published:January 12, 2010



Enter the Beat a Bunny Contest (it's about Brains not Brawn) and win an iPod!!

With the interest generated by EcoBeaker Maine Explorer, Maine EcoScienceWorks is announcing a new contest based on the Program a Bunny activity. The contest started early January 2010 and will continue through May 15, 2010. Please visit the contest website to find rules, guidelines and explanations. There are even movies to help you get started.

If you play computer games and like a challenge this contest is for you. All you need is your school laptop and this web site and you are ready to go! Have fun!


The Beat a Bunny Contest Rules & Guidelines

You can expect to invest some time (hours not minutes) and effort (thinking, tweaking your Code Blocks, collecting data, and writing conclusions) in entering the contest. There are important rules as for any contest.

*The first 50 students who send in a qualified entry will get a Beat a Bunny Contest 1 gig flash drive. The top two entries will get a brand new Apple iPod Nano and 3 runners-up will get iPod Shuffles.*

Your challenge is to get your gray bunny to beat the brown bunny in eating carrots and earning energy points during 1000 days (time steps). The number of carrots eaten is the most important evidence that your bunny outperformed the brown bunny, and the energy level is used as a tiebreaker.

NOTE: It is very unlikely that your bunny will ALWAYS beat the brown bunny, so do not be discouraged. You still may have come up with the "best" code compared to other students. While it is important that your bunny eats more carrots than the brown bunny, it is even more important that you explain your thinking and support your conclusions with evidence in the Summary of Results and Conclusions in your Final Submission Sheet as outlined in the following guidelines.


Guidelines (our suggestion for how you approach the contest):

  1. Read the rules below.
  2. Go to the Download section to find several items that may be useful to you. If you have watched the movies you may not need the Program a Bunny Worksheets, but they are there if you need them. You will also find the Final Submission Sheet.pages.zip and Scoring Rubric.pdf which you will need when you are ready to submit your final Code Block entry, Data Table and your Summary of Results and Conclusions.
  3. Open Maine Explorer and run Scenario 7. Observe what the bunnies are doing. It is possible that your gray bunny, BY CHANCE, may beat the brown bunny since at this point, the gray bunny's Code Block routine in the Programming Workspace is the same as the routine the brown bunny is following. Your challenge is to come up with a better set of Code Blocks for your gray bunny by rearranging and/or adding new blocks to the set you see in the Code Blocks Programming Workspace at the beginning of Scenario 7. Running each routine for 1000 days and repeating these runs a number of times is the best way to be sure you have come up with a good Code Block routine.
  4. One way of keeping track of your progress as you attempt to design the best routine is to:
    1. make a change you think will work,
    2. take a screenshot of the Code Blocks,
    3. save the screen shot in a folder on your desktop (or in the Lab Sheet Template that you can download), then run your routine
  5. Using the Lab Sheet Templates is a way to help you stay organized as you progress and will also help you remember what you did when you complete your Final Submission Sheet.
  6. Give your librarian or teacher the Final Submission Sheet, which includes your final Code Block entry, Data Table and your Summary of Results and Conclusions, and he or she will enter you into the contest.

Rules (if you do not follow these rules you will be disqualified):

1. You may not alter the 6 Code Blocks in the original set other than by moving them around (changing their order).
2. You must add at least one conditional Code Block (the green blocks) to the final code.
3. You can only gain energy from eating carrots and nibbling grass. [No eating the other rabbit, or the fence, or yourself, or grass. No nibbling carrots or anything but grass.]
4. Judges will use your Final Submission Sheet (especially your Summary of Results and Conclusions) to determine a winner. The Rubric the judges will use is in the Download section.