Jun 12, 2009

Engineering Challenge!

So today at my work, we did the following team-building exercise:

In 15 minutes, use these ingredients to assemble the tallest tower you can (three or four people per team; no added support from walls or ceilings or people) :

15 - standard popsicle sticks
12 - skewers (10"-ish)
10 - wood clothes pins
10 - rubber bands
10 - pipe cleaners
6 - 3" cubes of floral foam
6 - styrofoam bowls
5 - styrofoam cups
2 - standard containers of Playdough
1 - roll of duct tape


Since I am who I am (my engineer father's daughter), I took this task very seriously and was disappointed when at the end, my team's tower toppled over before measuring took place. The highest point in the rubble measured 8.5", so that was our finishing score. The winning team's tower was 96". Me and one of my coworkers decided to take our 15-minute break immediately afterward and attempted to assemble what we thought the winning tower would be (key to our plan: more duct tape than anything else), but at the end of our break we were only about halfway through the planned construction so that kind of failed.

So now I'm leaving it up to you. I triple-dog-dare you to build a better tower than the winning team. Perhaps as a FHE activity or a weekend activity with friends. You probably don't even have to buy all of the ingredients; I don't think any of the teams ended up using the Playdough. And then send me a picture and I'll show my boss and lie and say I did it. Because I'm ashamed of my failed attempts.

2 comments:

Rachael said...

I always take those things way too seriously, which is part of why I also kind of hate them because I always lose.

Can you imagine the shenanigans if we had ever tried to do an event like that with the friends from middle school and high school? Way too many engineers' children. And way lots competitiveness.

control valves said...

Sounds like fun!