For many years Pote Pothongsunan, our new 6th grade Science teacher, has had his students do an egg drop design challenge with a twist. They could only use a deck of cards and a stapler.

Cards were everywhere as students began experimenting with different ways to create a way to move a raw egg from the balcony of the J building to the ground without cracking it.

“We can only use cards and a stapler?” one asked in disbelief.

“Yes, that’s right,” replied Pote.

“Can we use the stapler as part of our invention?” asked a clever, out-of-the-box thinker.

I was delighted and couldn’t resist noting, “That is great thinking! What you’re doing is really important. You are testing the constraints of a design challenge. Designers do that.”

The students went through several prototyping sessions, enhancing their designs each time. Pote uses this unit as an introductory experience to his science unit on Forces. During the final egg drops, Pote videoed the different students’ work for the class to analyze later on.

Students not only learned a great deal about forces and impact. They practiced many of the steps of the Design Thinking process, including generating ideas, creating both idea sketches and final engineering drawings, and using the iterative prototyping and testing cycle.