MONDAY CHALLENGES

by: Collin G.

Each Monday the Drafting & Design class gets together and has a challenge set up for all of us. These little brain twisters often tease us by how easy it can be to do something. We have to find a way to make our project work better than all the others. Week one we received one piece of cardboard about 8 1/2 x 11 inches, a heavy book (textbook), masking tape, and eight sheets of newspaper. The object is to get as many books as you could hold on top of the cardboard. It had to be at least eight inches off the table.
In week two we were assigned to do a watercraft project. We each received duct tape, paper cups, 10-inch strip of plastic wrap, ten straws, and twenty five pennies. Also, there was a container full of water. We had to build a boat out of these materials and see who’s boat could hold the most pennies before the boat started taking on water.
In week three we had to make a zip-line, we got a piece of chipboard, 2 small paper cups, a ping pong ball, four plastic straws, scissors, a single-hole punch, four feet of tape. The first heat we had to make our zip-line carrier go down the string within four seconds, in the next heat we had to try to get the closest to four seconds, and in the last heat we had to try and make our carries last ten seconds before it hit the bottom.
Build, test, evaluate, & redesign are four things to consider while trying to design. You will mostly never be right the first time, you should always see what you did wrong the first time and try to make it better. Drafting & Design is a great hands-on class that prepares you for the future of drafting. In order to design something everyone needs to have ideas that are different and unique, that’s what makes the design better than all the others. I have learned a lot about designing from this class and it has helped me in a lot of different ways over the past year with other projects.