Background
Marshmallow and Spaghetti are great materials to prototype with – that is, if you don’t eat them first! The Spaghetti Marshmallow Challenge is a hands-on STEM activity that requires diverse participants to work as a team. It is a great opportunity to practice the five stages of the Design Thinking: hypothesize, define, ideate, prototype and test as a team.
Excellent learning from these two sessions conducted by Jashan and his team. Students have been adequately, joyfully engaged in deep learning [through] keen observation, factual documentation and analysis, [experimental] approach of discovering solutions to counter failure, conduct a thorough synthesis and bring forth common aspects of success and failure of the designed systems through a theoretical construct. […] Overall a great time for all of us. […] Students learnt to fail faster so that they got to learn and succeed sooner.
– Academic Head, AOA Mumbai
Spaghetti Marshmallow Challenge
The Spaghetti Marshmallow Challenge designed for students of architecture school spanned over 2 weeks, for a total of 8 working hours. Students work in teams of 4-6. They apply their knowledge of Theory of Design and Structures; to design and build their own towers using only 20 sticks of spaghetti and 30 pieces of marshmallow. Students take on specific roles in their respective teams; and design prototypes of their towers; focusing on structure and stability. The towers are loaded with weight to identify failure in terms of structural forces.
The activity instigates critical thinking among the teams. Students apply their practical observations to analyse reasons and points of failure in their respective towers. We encourage students to think on their feet by presenting them with limited material (as in the real world) and real-time challenges such as material supply shortages.
We conduct hands-on workshops for corporate team building and at design and hospitality schools globally. Let’s grab a (virtual) cup of coffee and chat about how we can help you. Contact us.