The University of Colorado at Boulder campus will be awash in imaginative and creative minds as thousands of students from around the world converge to compete in the 23rd annual Odyssey of the Mind World Finals May 22-25.
Â鶹ÊÓƵ 700 teams will participate in the event, which challenges students to come up with the most creative, original and imaginative ways to solve a selection of problems.
The teams, consisting of five to seven students, are judged on criteria such as quality, originality and meeting the problem's requirements. Students from throughout the United States and countries all over the world including China, Germany, Poland and Uzbekistan will compete in the World Finals on the CU-Boulder campus.
Each team chose at least one of five problems to solve and will be competing against other teams in their age bracket that solved the same problem. The teams worked for months developing their solutions and most advanced through earlier rounds of competition in their states or countries before making it to the finals. This year's problems follow:
The Chameleon is a problem for which teams create and drive a vehicle. Like a chameleon, the vehicle changes appearance to blend in with three different team-created environments. The person driving the vehicle also will blend in with the environment.
OMER's Earthly Adventures, written in consultation with NASA, requires teams to create devices to help preserve the environment. An OMER character, based on the Odyssey of the Mind raccoon mascot, uses creative problem-solving to fix malfunctions that allow others to complete tasks to save the environment.
Center Stage is a challenge in which teams create and present an original performance based on a work of classical literature, complete with a choreographed dance segment and featuring a character from a different work of classical literature.
It's a Snap challenges teams to create several structures of balsa wood and glue that, when joined together, weigh no more than 15 grams and stay together on their own. The object is for the structure to support as much weight as possible.
The Ostrich Factor is a humorous performance about a character with the ability to become invisible -- to all but one other character -- when it hides its head.
Each team also has to solve a spontaneous problem, which is a short-term challenge presented on the day of competition.
Odyssey of the Mind organizers expect about 12,000 people to attend the event, with the majority of the attendees staying on the CU-Boulder campus and in local hotels.
CU-Boulder is hosting the Odyssey of the Mind World Finals for the third time. The competition was first held on campus in 1989 and then in 1992.
The Odyssey of the Mind is an international program whose mission is to develop creative-thinking skills in students from kindergarten through college. The program began in 1978 and has grown to include millions of students worldwide.
For more information about the Odyssey of the Mind World Finals, visit the Web site at .