Recently, my team and I were given a challenge to create a contraption in which we'd place an egg and throw it from 10 feet above ground. Oh the catch? Of course there's a catch; it can't crack. Given nothing but straw and masking tape to create this device, we were given 25 minutes to plan and then 10 minutes to create the contraption as well as fit the egg into it. There were parts of the "Planning Process" that we followed, while there were certain parts that we didn't exactly go through.
As far as the first step is concerned (define goals and objectives), this is something we actually followed. We made sure we all understood the idea that even the tiniest crack in the egg, would disqualify us. Once we all understood that, we went forward with the process. Next, it was clear that we had a hands-on team when one member began creating possible designs for the device, while the others gave their input or began mapping out the resources we had and how we should use them. So we actually ended up following the second step as well.
After that came step three, in which we had to develop strategies and possible outcomes. Our group thought of several ideas, and immediately began throwing out pros and cons to the possible design. That way we heard everyone's ideas and discussed the outcomes in detail. One of us even went to the extent of creating prototypes using paper and scotch tape. At this point of writing the blog, I am surprised that we're actually following the "planning process." Haha.
Now came the time to actually finalize our game plan, a.k.a. step four. We decided on a plan a and plan b (just in case the first doesn't work of course). I being the clutz I am, decided to stay as far away from the egg we were given as possible (since if it broke, we'd be out of the competition). Instead, I decided to help make the actual device in which we were going to place the egg. One thing we didn't follow in step four is actually allocating a job to each person. We decided instead to just take it as it goes.
Finally, we began making the device. Surprisingly, everything went rather smoothly. I was happy to see how easily we all gelled with eachother. There was minimum chaos or arguments over the design and we finished within the 10 minutes we were given. Unfortunately, our design didn't save the egg from getting slightly cracked, but to see how close we were felt great! Of course getting the 10 points would've been 10x better but just the satisfaction of working together and actually making a device that would work felt great =)
After leaving class, a few of us talked about how if we had just used a little more tape here and an extra straw there, it wouldn't have cracked. However, we were really happy with our design and impressed with how it was rather accurate, since none of us really had much experience with this kind of thing.
