Team Building Day in Seattle!

How tall can you build a tower in 5 minutes with ordinary classroom materials? In Seattle we attempted to find out. We split up the school into two teams and gave them each 10 markers, 10 index cards, half a poster board, 2 plastic straws, and a clothespin. In addition to this, one team got clear packing tape and a pair of scissors and the other team got a roll of duct tape and a plastic knife and fork in lieu of scissors (in theory). So we started off and mayhem reigned for about five minutes with everybody shouting different ideas and asking for tape or asking what they should do next. When the dust cleared, team duct tape had a tower about 5 feet tall with a team member as support. Team scissors had a tower that was quite a bit shorter but could stand on its own. The moral of the story is that if you are going to build a tower out of materials that aren't meant to build a tower, you need about a 5-minute planning session before you start or you will end up changing your design about 18 times. But, Rome wasn't built in a day either.