Kosky, Balmer, Keat and Wise: Exploring Engineering, Fourth Edition
EXERCISES FOR CHAPTER 20
Note: There are no unique solutions to many of these exercises.
1) Develop a Gantt chart illustrating the process of making a paper airplane. Include all the
activities and time estimations, including brainstorming types of paper airplanes, designing you
plane, acquiring the paper, testing, and so forth.
2) Develop a Gantt chart for a typical day of your classes. Indicate the activities and the times
involved. Don’t forget homework and leisure time activities.
3) Develop a PERT chart for making a wooden birdhouse. What is the critical path? What
activities can be done in parallel?
4) Develop a PERT chart to illustrate the process of cooking a spaghetti dinner. What is the
critical path? What activities can be done in parallel?
5) Effective Teaming Exercise: The paper Tower Challenge
Equipment: each group receives 10 sheets of 8 ½ inches by 11 inches paper and a box of
paperclips.
Procedure:
Split the class into teams of 3 to 5 students each
Instruct the teams that they need to make the tallest tower possible with the material
supplied
They must demonstrate a design plan
The teams have 15 minutes to complete the task
They must not use any other equipment and the tower must be free standing
The team scoring is only based on the design plan and the final tower height.
6) Arrange to have your team visit a group of working engineers and have them explain how
they functions as a team. The engineering team should be one that has worked together for some
Team Communication Exercises1
7) Ask students to write detailed directions for making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for
someone who has never made any king of sandwich before. Discuss what the sandwiches might
look like after reading a few results2.
8) Divide the class into two equal groups. Call one Group A and the other Group B. Then form
multiple teams of three students in each group. Give each team in Group A 10 to 15 Lego blocks
and ask them to build something (anything). When they have finished, ask them to prepare
instructions on how to build what they have built using words and sketches. Finally, have them
dissemble their Lego object and pass their Legos and their instructions to a team in Group B and
have them follow the instructions to rebuild the first group’s object. Team scores are based on
how close the reconstructed object is to the original object.
9) This exercise demonstrates the importance of communicating information. At a wedding the
best man is the brother of the usher, and he and the bridesmaid went to college with the groom.
The usher went into the army after high school. Ann’s college roommate took Sally to a family
reunion in May. Steve and Jerry had to give up their Rose Bowl tickets to attend the wedding.
Dan and Steve’s mother attended the wedding, but didn’t sit with her sons. What are the names
of the bride, bridesmaid, groom, best man, and usher?
Answer: bride: Sally; bridesmaid: Ann; groom: Jerry; best man: Steve; usher: Dan3.
Team Problem Solving Exercises4
10) A student ties a small helium filled balloon to her car seatbelt with a string. After driving for
a while at a constant speed, she suddenly brakes the car to a stop. Does the balloon move
forward, or backward, or not at all relative to the seat while the car is stopping?
Answer: backward. Since the air displaced by the helium balloon is heavier than helium balloon,
the air in the back of the car moves forward pushing the balloon backward.)
1 The Internet contains many websites with examples of teambuilding communication and problem solving
exercises.
2 For more details, see: http://www.nrpa.org/blog/how–to-make-a-peanut-butter-and-jelly-sandwich-a-speed-session–
preview/
3 For the detailed rationale of the answer, see page 161 at https://www2.cortland.edu/dotAsset/c1a635f6-a099-4ede-
8f15-79b86e315088.pdf
4 For more team problem solving exercises for engineering students, see:
http://web.stanford.edu/group/ree/archives/archive07/usa/notes/2004-897_Final.pdf
11) Students are given a 12” ruler, 8”x 8” mirror, paper, and a pencil. Their task is to explore
ways to measure an unreachable height in a building. This team-based activity takes about 15
minutes, and helps students find solutions for ordinary problems in not–so-ordinary ways. Groups
of 2 – 3 students are best.
12) Students are shown a wire coat hanger and asked to individually list different possible uses.
They may consider cutting it, bending it, or reshaping it in any way. (The coat hanger may be
substituted with any other basic familiar object such as a book, backpack, paper cup, etc.)
13) At a University, all of the students are majoring in statistics, business, or both. 55 % of the
students are statistics majors and 77 % are business majors. If there are a total of 500
students, how many of them are majoring in both statistics & business?
Answer: 160 students. If 55 % of the students are statistics majors, we know that 45 % are not
statistics majors. And if 77% of the students do major in business then 23 % are not business
majors. So 45% + 23% = 68% of the students are not majoring in both statistics and business.
Therefore 100% – 68% = 32% are double majors and 500 × 0.32 = 160 students.
14) A student likes all of the number groups 45, 97, 678, 3976 except one. Which one does he
not like?
Answer: The student doesn’t like the number 678 because the digits add up to 21 and the other
numbers add to values that have integer square roots.
Team Planning Exercise5
15) This exercise involves a team trying to tie a simple knot in a rope. Many student teams will
expect the solution to be simple, but it is more difficult than it appears. (This is a good
comparison to real–life projects that are more complex than they seem.)
You need two ropes: a 10 ft. length of soft nylon braided rope 3/8 to 1/2 inches in diameter, and
a 40 ft. length of rope that has a slightly larger in diameter, say 1/2 to 5/8 inches in diameter.
Join the two ropes together with a simple knot. Next, tie the free end of the shorter section of
rope to something solid, like a table leg. You should now have the 10 ft. rope anchored to a table
leg and connected to the 40 ft. rope.
Have the team members all pick up the longer section of rope. Tell them to tie a simple overhand
knot in the smaller section of rope (the section closest to the table).
5 For more on this team planning exercises see:
http://www.atctraining.com/log/cat_planning_advanced_team_concepts_-_blogs__team_building_-
_activity_of_the_month.htm
Kosky, Balmer, Keat and Wise: Exploring Engineering, Fourth Edition
Rules:
They cannot let go of the rope.
They cannot change their positions relative to each other on the rope.
They cannot touch the smaller section of the rope.
The team will must move together to tie the knot in the long rope that they are holding. This will
require team planning. They will need to create the loop and pass certain team members through
it to make a knot. The challenge then becomes how to transition the knot onto the smaller section
of rope, without touching the smaller rope or letting go of the larger rope.