Thinking is a tool. How sharp is yours?
Paul Ostryzniuk (13 points) | Fri, 2005-11-04 16:23Hi,
I'm a practicing post graduate student, and I am interested in the process and technique of thinking, as a tool to improve design.
I hereby set all of you willing (or capable) a challenge. Please don't search the web or ask anyone for the answer, as it will ruin the point of the exercise.
What I want people to do is analyse the very personal and intuitive process you go through when you are thinking. I'll set a puzzle that is lifted directly from an Edward De Bono book, so some of you may already know the solution. If you take up the challenge, please post your thought process, whether it came quickly or slowly, whether you tried many different possibilities and figured it out through trial and error, or did you study the problem and only attempt a few possibilities before you found the solution? Please don't reply with the solution, it will ruin it for the other!
Did you draw on past knowledge and experience, or will you figure it out by your own deduction? What did you try? What worked and what didn't? Hopefully this will be both fun and challenging, and interesting posts will be made.
So, the problem is this. Take 4 bottles, upturned glasses, or something similar and 4 knives (flat handled knives will be easier to use). Place the 3 bottles in a triangle on a desk so they are just further than a knife length apart. Using the knives create a platform between the bottles that will support the 4th bottle. None of the knives may touch the floor.
Enjoy.
Paul Ostryzniuk,
Safety First Design
Commenting on this Forum topic is closed.
I figured it out just by imagining the problem in my head. It took like 15 seconds until i realized how to do it.
I've never heard of this one before either.. clever ;)
I got the solution in 10 secs :)
i didn't imagine and i didn't do it in 10sec. (maybe 20.6). i guess either could have happened, but i had paper so i drew and let the solution come through my pen.
very poetic, no?
b/c i'm thinking (there i go again) that this was just a warm-up excersize.
Did it in less than a minute once I had found the glasses and knives : )
Has it been long enough since this was posted, so I can share my connotations to a mechanical aperture once I started laying out the knives?
Kjetil Valen
kjetil . valen (a) skir . no
Leo Valen
leo (a) code.coop
See here: http://macintalk.com/?q=node/120
And if you're really über l337: http://macintalk.com/?q=node/121
Mackie, thanks for the image. Am I missing something that on your picture the glasses are too close? They need to be apart longer distance than the knives.
Lower down I posted another solution for the problem. But if they're apart longer than the knives, how do you put the knives on it?
How bout putting two knives across each other with a 3rd on the support them, and a 4th one to give additional support?
The way I read it, the glasses, or bottles need to be "just further than a knife length apart" which means the knives could not reach from one glass to the next.
Am I missing something?
hahah...figured it out about 20 seconds after posting.
There is another solution, put 2 knives in an L across the cups and then the last one goes on top..
i think you need a harder question. i found the answer out in a couple seconds just by picturing it in my mind. thought process= almost none.
Sound and Stage Solutions
To answer your question...
1. First I drew the problem on paper because I thought I can solve it easily just by figuring it out without looking for objects. I drew from top view.
2. I started to think from the direction that what kind of structure would support something like a glass. So, I drew two parallel knives, a T shape and a triangle shape.
3. I figured that only a T shape can work because nothing else can be recreated with the knives. I had a theory for a T shape to work. Since the knives are shorter than the distance between two glasses I needed extra support for a knife to extend on both directions.
4. I tested the theory in practice and it worked, but it's very delicate and not strong at all. All depends on the weights. If the glass is too heavy and the knives are light they won't hold, so I'm not sure if it works...
Hope I didn't reveal too much and still managed to describe my thought process. Honestly I feel dumb compared to you guys, because it took me more than 15 minutes to go through this exercise.
It took me a minute or so to picture the set up in my head. The position of the knives was a mixture of logic (what shape makes the most sturdy structure) and intuition. I tried out the knife pattern using pens on my desk and corrected a small error I was making, then I tried it using real glasses and knives. I only used three knives and the whole thing was quite strong.
Thanks everyone for having a bash.
It seems that some of you have solved the problem without reading the question completely. It is possible I didn't write it properly.
Each glass must be more than 1 knifes length away from any other glass. This means that 1 knife cannot bridge the gag between 2 glasses/bottles.
I look forward to seeing if anyone else posts a photo of the solution. Good Luck Mackie!