The messy spaghetti challenge

Recently I’ve been involved into training enthusiasts, forming teams for one of the largest fin-tech companies in Sofia. The training involved iterative prototyping learning, and I prepared the usual – ‘marshmallow challenge, spaghetti tower’… Starting explaining the rules, the folks looked at me without a slight excitement in the eyes and murmured ‘no… not another tower - we will have to beat the record now’. It turned out – they have already played the game a couple of times.

It shouldn’t have been surprising to me, and I was like ‘Alright, let’s do something better then…’ – I was looking desperately around and thinking fast - what else they could possibly be able to build with 60 spaghetti sticks, some tape and string, and be challenged and excited… - ‘…You are going to build a bridge… and a big one … it needs to connect the two teams’ tables, and hold some weight to prove it is durable… Have you done this before?’ … They haven’t… and it was challenging as well (the distance was about a meter or so). I was used to experimenting in building spaghetti bridges in other training sessions, but never such a big one.

The guys were up to the challenge. Some of them started planning, only to find out their plans won’t work; others started experimenting fast… In the end all of them decided they will fail with the weights test if not invoking some magical force to hold the bridge tight in the middle. And the miracle of dropped ceiling installment came in handy, only to be used to hold the magical force :)

Enjoy the experience and the final result with the photos below. Well done everyone!