Walchandnagar: Day 3

Day three with the students of BCA, we felt the familiar buzz of excitement as our car drove passed the gates of the school. Our team has been enthused by the energy from the students and teachers in the past two days. As was customary in the culture, the students greeted us by standing up as we walked into the classroom.

We jumped right into the day with the Floating Structures Challenge. Students were given very limited materials—5 mini straws, 5 inches of tape, and a square of plastic wrap—and were instructed to design and build a structure that could remain afloat while holding the most weight.  The students were pushed to apply the concepts they had learned in school and in the past two days. We were very impressed by the teamwork in the 16 different groups and the creative designs that the teams implemented. Buoyancy was a key concept in this activity; the students did a wonderful job of applying this concept with their limited materials in order to maximize the amount of weight their structures could hold without sinking. 

We tested the structures by putting them in the water and seeing how many coins each could hold before sinking. The students placed the coins onto their boats themselves, which served as another method to test their applied knowledge of buoyancy. One team was able to reach 83 coins before their boat sunk. This impressive feat was accomplished with a simple square-shaped design; four straws on each side with plastic wrap wrapped around it. The physics teacher seemed to be very proud of his students who were able to apply their knowledge of buoyancy from class to be successful in this challenge.

During the challenge, we had an exchange of knowledge on the differences between Indian and American coin currencies. Our hearts were warmed at the end of the day by the smile of one of the boys at the camp. We were able to give him a set of USD coins for his coin collection—never was it easier to give away of 41 cents.

After a short break, we resumed with what was perhaps the most frustrating activity for the students—the Custard Assembly Line Challenge. For those of you who do not know what this is, this challenge is for the most part non-technical but drives home concepts such as ethics, teamwork, and working through unfamiliar situations. We present the challenge with almost no information; we tell them that each group is now a company that has been hired to create custard cups, and that they have one hour to create their product and come up with a radio advertisement. 

Throughout the assembly, we stressed the teams to the limit as we bombarded their companies with “communication failures”, “power outages”, and “company restructuring”. Respectively the students had to stop talking, close their eyes, or lose a member of their team. At the beginning of the challenge, our demands were met by some resistance, giggles, and strange looks as the students had never experienced a situation like this before. However, they soon realized that we were serious in our demands, and students were forced to experience situations that were very frustrating but are real challenges in everyday life.

We finished with a discussion on how teams were able to maintain quality, efficiency, and management while facing constant challenges. We were also able to tie the activity back to ethics—a topic that permeates our lives as Engineering students at the University of Michigan. This challenge is designed to make it so easy to whisper just a few words during communication failure, easy to peek just a little during the power outages, or spread some false messages during the radio advertisement. As one of the teachers helped to sum up, “the right choice is not always the easy choice.” This simple activity was powerfully thought provoking.

Compared to the other challenges we had presented, we were perhaps more nervous about this one as we were unsure how a different culture would receive the Custard Assembly Line Challenge. However, we were very glad to hear that the teachers felt this challenge was very relevant to real life. They expressed positive feedback on how the activity pushed students to work as a team through difficult and frustrating situations. They also liked how the students had a chance to work on English speaking skills and creativity in presenting the radio advertisement; one team had a short skit and another wrote a very compelling poem to sell the “delicious & nutritious custard cups”. The teachers were also appreciative for the coverage on ethics which is directly related to the students’ Moral Science classes—which are required courses for K-12 students in India.

This evening was refreshingly more slow-paced, as the bottle rocket team was very on top of their game. Almost all of their preparations for the next day were already completed, save for one final test launch. We are already convinced that the staff members at the house think we are some crazy kids; between perusing the garden for large sticks, hoarding all the used water bottles, and launching things around the courtyard we really can’t blame them. This of course is made much more comical by the fact that we do not share a common language with the lady staff and so are not able to tell them that these are all things for our projects with the students. We figure we are quite the unusual bunch to be staying in this guest house which accommodates businessmen for the most part.

We ended the day as always with our wonderful 8:30pm dinner, while again in a perpetual state of gratitude for the extraordinarily gracious hospitality that we have received during our stay. After dinner we opened the bedroom door to find a gecko taking a leisurely stroll in the previously dark and empty room. He was quite surprised by the sudden lights and loud noises and skittered away under a bed. Between fears of waking up to geckos on faces and fears of geckos on laptops, two valiant members of the SWE Overseas team (Michelle and Liana) approached the corner with bucket and glass cup in hand. After a bit of a tussle—I learned that geckos are very fast creatures—we (Michelle and Liana) were able to safely transport the gecko back outside.

After the excitement of the night, we retired early to rest up for the bottle rocket challenge the next day. As always, our minds were filled with excitement for the following day as we drifted off—though this time thoughts were also tinged bittersweet, since tomorrow would be our final day with the students of BCA.

-  Jennifer