class1: transporting sand

The task is to transport sand (about half a bucket) through 3 spatial location by constructing efficient, robust, economical structure, using cardboard, tapes and other stuff.

Tish first class is a big lesson. We spent an hour in brainstorming and ended up with a decision that team members design and make their own structures to transport sands. Everybody is smart and unwilling to abandon his/her idea. In our case, the right way to make the final product work is not picking the best idea, but to work on either one of the possible one and solve upcoming problems. To some extent, it’s stubborn to stick to one’s idea. Finally no one actually achieve a working setup.

One key issue here is to understand expectation by teachers. We are used to solve problems that are carefully designed so that it’s within our ability. But it’s not the case in smartsurfaces and probably in real world. Ultimate expectations are always idealized: fully automation, accurate distribution of sands, fast transportation and so on. We did not give it a second thought because we are so confident.

This lesson is very meaningful in future and , to some extent, answer's Prof. Shtein's question: why we always don't have enough time. It's not time's fault, but ours.