The in class activity last week, was definitely a very fun experience. The objective was to plan and build a protecting “cage” around an egg, consisting out of 9 straws + 2 feet of tape. The whole purpose of the straw creation was to prevent the egg from cracking, when dropped from a higher distance.
This was definitely much harder than we all thought, and only one group (congrats to youJ) was able to succeed, and prevent the egg from breaking when dropped.
What Went Wrong?
In theory I think that our plan was great—which was also the problem. Like for most of us, the plan did not work in reality. Our goals and objectives were clear, and we worked together to come up with the “best” solution for the straw creation. However, we did not evaluate our resources properly! We were not realistic, when considering building our cube, which was suppose to protect the egg. Further, it was not quite clear by the time we started how the egg was going to stay inside the cube. The perfect drawing of a cube did not look like a cube in reality (not even close) not only was it hard to make a perfect cube out of straws, but also the time limit effected the look and the purpose of the “outcome”. Another problem was that we did not have enough tape to hold up the egg inside. Neither did we evaluate any alternatives. We were so sure that our plan would work that we completely overlooked possible alternatives. Finally, when we realized that we needed to alter a few things on the construction, it was too late—time was already up.
What We Should Have Done!
Our biggest mistake was that we were very optimistic about the time. Which I have noticed is very common when it comes to planning. During the planning period, we came up with the “perfect” plan, pretty fast. However, we did not evaluate any other alternatives. It was obvious that when it was time for us to implement the plan, we should have come up with a plan B!
It's great that your group was able to all agree on one idea at the beginning! My group had so many ideas it was hard to pick one. We had a similar idea about trying to build a cube like contraption but as soon we got the resources we realized our plan was not going to work. It was hard to plan with so little time!
ReplyDeleteUnlike your group our group was evaluating all ideas anyone had to create one perfect structure. We spent all time with arguing about how straws wouldn't and would bend and how the egg was to be set and properly attached to all supporting materials. We used all our straws and half of the tape was left unused when we finished. Of course we changed our creation while building it, because straws wouldn't bent the way we expecting and the egg was was too loose inside our structure. But still this experience was way to great despite of the outcome of the challenge.
ReplyDelete