This morning's breakfast came brutally early, but the boys got themselves up and out the door in decent time and on our way to the first day of excitement.  A walk across campus got us to Engineering 5 (E5), the building that we will base ourselves out of for much of the trip.  They tackled a ball problem where they needed to transfer a ball among all of the boys with some interesting constraints.  They did very well, almost beating the record last year's group set.  As part of the process, they explored a brainstorming strategy that focuses on creating the worst solutions to problems.  Once "anti-solutions" to problems were identified, they then needed to come up with a way of taking one of these "anti-solutions" and actually make it work as a solution.  

Edwin discovering ways to NOT separate recycling!

The next problem was one near and dear to my own heart.  They were tasked with making a better coffee cup.  The discussion of the history of the coffee cup and the various ways people have tried to solve this problem was informative and lead to looking at different ways of solving the problem, whether that might be focusing on aesthetics, materials, safety, or other attributes.

The remainder of the afternoon is being spent introducing a long-term challenge for the week, the "Create Value" challenge, building devices that move ping-pong balls to a specific target using an electric motor and cardboard, and then getting in to design for Virtual Reality environments.  An exciting start to the week.  Assuming that we all survive the Zombie battle after dinner tonight, you should hear from us again tomorrow!