Creativity
Theory and Practice
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I believe that the egg drop was more than just an engineering experiment, but a test of ones creativity. Each group or person had brilliant and unique ideas that they brought to the table. I was rather pleased in my groups ideas as well. We each put forth an equal amount of thought and construction to the design. It was fantastic to see our creation come to life and work as we planned for it to do. We first made a conical shape out of a single piece of paper for which the egg was to rest in. Next we designed a make-shit like parachute out of paper that would stall the decent of the egg. Finally we attached and folded other pieces of paper and attached them at different angles. This caused the design as a whole to spin as it fell from the ladder, thus causing a slower decent. Other groups too had great ideas. Some very far fetched to very basic ideas such as surrounding the egg by covering it in paper and held together by tape. This was a great idea and really allowed for our creative sides to show. (could this count for one of the logs I’m missing)
Great comment, Jason! Yes, the egg drop was also supposed to represent the creative process. I had my husband do it in a Psychology of Success class some years ago so I could use it to teach the 5 stages of creativity.
I also liked the egg drop. It was great to see how everyones creative process is different. It was hard to try and come up with a design with so little material to work with but also the time restrain that we had. It helped to have a partner who you work well with because you both had to agree on the design in a short amount of time. If there was any problems the task could not be completed. I made you think out side of the box and get your creativity flowing. I think that the egg drop definitely represented the creative process as well as got us out side on a beautiful day.
The egg drop was a great way of helping us develop our creativity, or harness it to solve a dilemma. The task was to use four sheet of paper and one long strand of tape to prevent an egg from being dropped from a 15-foot ladder. The we had a 15-minute time frame to accomplish this. I believe the time limit is what truly helped our creative abilities come forth. At first, I thought that the solution would be extremely simple and would come to me by thinking out of the box. At first I thought that i could tape one end of the tape to the top of the ladder and just let it drop and have the egg hang, but I was told it would be against the rules. After that, I was in the incubation stage because my original plan was kaput. Then I had a burst of illumination when I remembered a movie I watched the night before where one of the machines that drilled into the asteroid was a tiny ball protected by little legs all over so if the machine tilted or was flipped any way, there would be legs to support it. I thought of the egg being dropped and having it surrounded by legs all over so it would land supported. This design worked to an extent. After it dropped, the egg was fine, it did not touch the cement, the legs broke the fall. Unfortunately, the egg I chose already had a crack in it prior to the drop so it did not count as a complete success, but in my eyes it passed!
What a great answer, Sandro! It shows several features of creativity.
the egg drop was probably the most fun thing i have ever done in a class. i really liked it because it forced you to work with what you had quickly and come up with creative ideas to make it work. it was also kind of cool because i feel like i was able to take some ideas from the class and your husbands lecture on architecture. it also had you cover the 5 steps of creativity well almost the incubation stage was thrown out the door by the time constraint. it really made you think out side the box which is something we hear at cal maritime are not taught to do so it was really interesting to see all the different ideas people were able to come up with. more hands on projects would be really cool to include in your class but i know there kinda hard to set up. i think next time you do this you should add something new like a couple of rubber bands or maybe give each person a mystery item they pick blindly out of a bag, it might be kind of fun to add a twist to it? over all i think the egg drop was a really good exercise and really fun and it should stay apart of the class!!!