Monday, May 30, 2011

Originality Challenge!

Try this challenge before reading the entire post:

Come up with multiple solutions to move 5 balls from one box to another without touching or damaging the balls or boxes.

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(please come up with solutions before reading on)

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What did you come up with? A grabber or a slide maybe?

Here's the results from an experiment we did with 30 students. The students all got to sketch their solutions.

Solution (How many out of 30 total concepts)
Slide (16)
Grabber (8)
Robot (1)
Grabber/slide combination (1)
Conveyor belt (1)
Vacuum suction cup (1)
Vacuum suction tube (1)
Hand (1) (does not meet design requirement)


Did you come up with something different?

Out of curiosity we posed the same question to a few faculty members in engineering and got various types of grabbers again....how Original!