When my group and I first gathered together for this project, we were very enthusiastic. Personally, I thought I had a good plan and so did everyone else in my group. None of us have yet won an activity that will get us extra points on our test so we were very determined. Everyone will listen to each other's thoughts and look at the pros and cons.
From the start we all shared a common idea of creating a box of straws that will prevent the shell from breaking. As we began to analyze how the box will work, we started shifting this idea and came up with a cone shape for the egg. We believed that because we were going to drop the egg, we'll do it very slowly so it falls in one single direction. It was established that the possibilities were 50/50 so we had to come about a better strategy. We thought that if we added more straws, we will not be showing half of the egg that we were suppose to. Instead we applied two straws beside the egg in case that when it drops and goes side ways, the straws will serve as protection. These will extract the first impacts when it hits the floor causing less damages to the egg itself. After we finish discussing, we had to illustrate our ideas into a piece of paper. This was our first challenge because it made us realize how effective of our plan would actually be.
When we got the materials and proceeded with the project we noticed that the egg was too covered up and we feared that due to this we might get disqualified. We took another alternative which was our initial plan to make a sort of base for the egg and we left the other half of the it unprotected because we had in mind only half of it to be displayed. At the end we finished with a different image than that we had in mind. We had a base for the egg, cone shaped. However, we never thought about the straws being too light. This was a problem because when we would drop the egg instead of going the side where the straws were, the weight of the egg will make it go towards that direction. At this point we only had a few seconds, very little time to think of something else.
In conclusion, our egg did break causing us yet another disappointment. After observing everyone, we saw that the successful groups had a base square shaped, very similar to our box idea. In my personal opinion, I think that due to time constraint, we overlooked the little things that could of made us win. We should of had stick with our first plan and elaborate in it. Nevertheless, we sure did have a good time planning and working as a team.
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I agree that the time constraint was very limited and that's what really caused problems and caused many of them to fail. But I think that the fact that each group came up with a different design was very interesting, as you said, originally you wanted to make a box, but didn't and saw someone else do it and worked. I believe most of the original ideas would've worked better than the conglomeration of so many people's idea that don't really support each other's idea.
ReplyDeleteI also enjoyed the egg-cellent exercise. It shows us how important it is to make a plan and actually implement it. I just wish we had a chance to redo the exercise and see if we were able to fix our mistakes.
ReplyDelete-Siobhan
By reading other blogs, I've noticed your group was not the only group with time issues, however it seems like you did a good job on planning the whole assignment. I like the idea that your group agreed upon a common idea on how to protect the egg and elaborated on the idea by analyzing the pros and cons. My group approached the task in a similar way and while I felt my group did a good job, our results were a failure. I also can agree that after seeing the experiment in action, if we were given another chance we would of succeeded by making the minor changes necessary. Good job!
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