The Spaghetti Tower

You are given 20 pieces of regulation length spaghetti, an arms-length of tape, and a singular marshmallow. Build a tower that holds the marshmallow at the highest point possible for a total of 15sec. Oh yeah, and you only have 15min to build.

This was the assignment given to the at the time recently formed groups of 4 in CEE Statics 241 at UNLV Fall 2019.

My group of 4 went with the “get strait to it” approach rather than developing a thorough plan ahead of time. This was initially a great plan as we seemed to be making great progress with our limited time. However, things started going downhill fast.

As we started attempting to assemble some of the pieces of our towar we quickly started realizing some flaws in our quickly thought through plan. The tape started to lose its adhesive strength and our structure just wasn't sturdy enough to support even itself. Time to last-minute design a new plan since we are almost out of time.

In the end, we did not have a structure that was functional at even standing by itself.

What did I learn?

Masking tape is not a very good adhesive. Pasta is not very strong. And don’t build anything without a plan. When in a time crunch, the design is crucial so that everyone can efficiently and correctly manufacture or create was needs to be produced without confusion in regards to what the final product will be. I also learned that working with people is never easy and compromise is very important. It is however also important to have someone that collects all the members' ideas for evaluation so there is not a “whatever you want to do” feedback loop. As with any group project, it is also important to communicate and be patient with others since everyone learns and understands differently.