As a follow-up to the Marshmallow Challenge last year, this fall we’ve put together our second collaborative design challenge for Cornerstone students. The Learning Studio will provide supplies for the exercise, so please come by before your Wednesday or Friday classes to pick up your paper sacks.
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Before the Challenge
You and your peer leader should arrive a couple minutes early to complete the following tasks.
- Place one paper sack on each group table. Each sack contains 50 pieces of spaghetti, a roll of tape, 1 yard of string, and a pair of scissors.
- Divide students into groups of 4-5 as they come in. At least 4 per group is ideal but up to 6 can work.
You should discuss with your peer leader which of you will “direct” the event and which of you will act as “referee,” fielding questions and leading the final measuring.
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During the Challenge
In 5 minutes or less, you or your peer leader will introduce the challenge to students. Please READ the following rules aloud beforehand. Since we’ll announce a Cornerstone winner, help us ensure consistency across all sections.
RULES: Your job in the next 30 minutes is to create the longest freestanding bridge with the materials at your tables. No begging, borrowing, or stealing of materials. Many spaghetti bridge challenges measure how much weight these structures can bear before failing, BUT for our challenge we’ll measure how wide a distance your bridge can span without falling or breaking.
Your team may use as much or as little of the materials in your kit as you choose and may break pieces of spaghetti into any length you choose. But the final structure must be freestanding without being tied to or taped to any external support.
- The final measurement for each spaghetti bridge will be the span between two tables. The bridge needs to remain horizontal without bending or breaking, without taping either end of the bridge to either table or surface. The final bridge should bow downward no more than 6 inches from the level of the bridge supports on either side.
- Please help groups keep their work areas clean or be ready to spend time after the challenge cleaning up before the end of class.
One of you will need to be the timekeeper: the challenge runs exactly 30 minutes. If possible, open this Online Stopwatch and project it on a screen in the room. Otherwise, just announce when students have 10 minutes, 5 minutes, and 2 minutes left.
Feel free to encourage teams as you walk around the room, but please don’t offer suggestions or hints.
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After the Challenge
When time is called, ask each team to bring their bridge to the front of the room. You will need two flat surfaces (table edges or chairs) that you can slowly back away from each other until each bridge falls. You’re welcome to measure the span for each group individually, or only submit one winner distance.
Send the official span and list of participants in the winning group along with photos of the longest or most unusual structures to learningstudio@groupmail.acu.edu. Then we will announce the top three results and give prizes to the widest structure for 10:00 and 1:00.
The value of the exercise depends on the processing after the fact. AFTER the challenge, be ready to talk to students about how they planned and produced their bridges. Ideally, these reflections might include learned about collaboration and how their groups worked together, experimentation and the value of prototyping, and what they might do differently if you ran the challenge again.
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