The cantilever challenge was a week-long activity in Ken Symington's "Design Thinking and Media Communications" class.  

Students had to build the longest and strongest cantilever measured from the desk edge to the end of the cantilever.  Students were given one period to brainstorm

The Marshmallow Challenge is a classic design challenge that forces you to think about about the assumptions in your problem - plus it's just plain fun. But by this point most of the Makerspace

The legendary CHAOSMaker "Mysterious Building Challenges" - show up, be given a mostly random set of materials and a problem, and then work in teams under strict time pressures to come up with a solution. It's the perfect way to teach about prototyping, resource

Another challenge from Ken Symington's "Design Thinking and Media Communications" class : carry as many ping-pong balls across the room as possible without dropping them or getting stuck. Oh, and use a robot. Once each Sphereo was successful, the students joined their ping-pong bot carriers to

Another interesting problem from Ken Symington's "Design Thinking and Media Communications" class. In this design challenge, students were tasked with building the strongest structure using only newspaper and masking tape. The winning structure held 14 textbooks and stood almost a metre tall!

Speed, acceleration, velocity - and possible wet splatty impact!? As part of Ken Symington's Physics 20 class, students needed to build an amusement park ride that took their precious cargo (an egg) on a wild ride without loss of eggy life. The egg amusement ride needed to take the "passenger"