Week One: In-Class Activity

As an introductory game for our teams, we participated in the "Spaghetti Challenge." This game was a quick, fun way to get to know our new team mates and find out what roles we naturally take in a group environment. The challenge was a lot of fun and we worked really well together, initially discussing strategy and deciding on a structure and then working together at different tasks (e.g. making the base, taping spaghettis together, holding the structure). We created a tall, but unstable spaghetti/ marshmallow tower which stood up for a few seconds before unfortunately collapsing. 

Putting the finishing touches on the structure.

Our spaghetti/ marshmallow tower after it collapsed.

Some of the other teams came up with really innovative ways to create structures with spaghetti, tape, string and marshmallow, which let them get quite a lot of height:

Other teams successful spaghetti structures.

After looking around the other teams structures, we saw that having a triangular base was a very popular solution to the brief, which was what we did too. Our structure would have worked a lot better if we had used a few more spaghetti sticks in the base area as it was just too thin and non supported for its height to support the marshmallow on the top. Despite the fact that our spaghetti tower collapsed, it was a great way to get to know each other and get some practise working as a team before we begin working to the brief for this paper.