Saturday, February 11, 2006

Wacky Inventions

Yesterday during my Creativity class, we were split into two groups (so happened to be French versus English...) and were handed each a bag with various items inside. Our goal was to invent a functional object using all the items supplied. In our bag we were given:
-A martini glass
-Black Bristol board
-2 Green plastic leighs
-A flap jack flipper
-2 red clip magnets
-A sheet of thin insulation
-2 copper wools
-5 chop sticks
-A bunch of plastic ties (the ones that you put one end through the other and pull until tight and can't undo them)
-A bunch of paper clips
-Scotch tape
-A knife

After several ideas ( a telescope, a dog toy, a cheese grater) we came up with a Martini making machine. The final project looked pretty damn cool. We basically used the Bristol board body by rolling it into a cylinder and then cut a door out of it.The flap jack flipper was used to place the martini glass in and out of the contraption. The foam became a funnel. We used the chop sticks and copper wool to be the base to place the flap jack flipper and also as a filter above where the glass goes. The leighs became the "juice" and we ripped one so it hung out of the funnel/filter and into the glass. The whole thing was to be graded for 10% of our final mark so I hope my team did well.

The other team came up with a less impressive invention. Originaly they got lazy and were going to make a TV antenna out of the chopsticks and Bristol board but were told it had to be something that doesn't already exist. So, they last minute through everything on top and said it was a special machine that oxidized water into oxygen. Later on we had to switch sides and write down the positive, negative and interesting facts about the other groups invention. Boy did I ever have the advantage of having studied chemistry. Yeah right, like water can ever be turned into oxygen. What next? Using the suns energy to power cars?

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