Puzzle Cube Project

Define The Problem

A local office furniture manufacturing company throws away tens of thousands of scrap ½ ” hardwood cubes that result from its furniture construction processes. The material is expensive, and the scrap represents a sizable loss of profit. Fine Office Furniture, Inc. would like to return value to its waste product by using it as the raw material for desktop novelty items that will be sold on the showroom floor. Design, build, test, document, and present a three-dimensional puzzle system that is made from the scrap hardwood cubes. The puzzle system must provide an appropriate degree of challenge to high school students.

Criteria:

• The puzzle must be fabricated from 27 – ½” hardwood cubes.

• The puzzle system must contain exactly five (5) puzzle parts.

• Each individual puzzle part must consist of at least four, but no more than six hardwood cubes that are permanently attached to each other.

• No two puzzle parts can be the same.

• The five puzzle parts must assemble to form a 1 ½” cube.

• Some puzzle parts should interlock.

Constraints

This is due on Sunday, September 25th 2022

• The puzzle must be fabricated from 27 – ½” hardwood cubes.

• No two puzzle parts can be the same

• There need to be 5 pieces each with 4-6 blocks.

• The cubes need to form a 3 by 3 cube or a 1.5 in by 1.5 in cube.

Generate Concepts

3. Develop a Solution

4. Construct and Test

Step V: Evaluate Solution

Reflection:

This was a very new concept to me. I have never done something close to this and I really did enjoy it. One thing I think I could've done better was make simpler shapes. The shapes ended up being very complex and looping around each other making the puzzle difficult to solve. I learned that just by giving them one hint as soon as they start they could solve the puzzle much faster. I also learned that solving the cube step by step was much more efficient. On top of that I learned that telling them the order in which they are supposed to place the blocks helped them save a lot of time. This puzzle is much easier the second time since only the first step is tricky. one thing I struggled on was glueing. The puzzle ended up being very uneven and when put together had parts stick out of it. One thing I liked about the project was that it was very straight forward. I didn't spend too much time on each part and was able to finish each part in about a day. Overall I would say that I really did enjoy this project. Although it wasn't easy, it wasn't too hard either. If I did this project again I would give the cube better shapes and make sure I glue all the cubes together right. I think I would also try and make one extremely difficult and see how that goes.

Data Analysis:

I think that the data I collected wasn't too helpful. First Micah tried to solve it and he did it in over 4 minutes. I gave him his first hint at 2 minutes, which was showing him where the first block should go. Then at 4 minutes I showed him where the second block went. After that he only took a few second to solve the puzzle. Then Siddharth gave it a try and did it in around the same time as Micah. I gave him the first hint as soon as he started and gave him the second one at 4 min. He then only took a few seconds to solve the rest. Then Ezra did the whole thing in about 3 minutes. I gave him his first hint as soon as he started and he got it done pretty quickly compared to the other 2. I think that an average person would take about 4 minutes to complete the puzzle as Siddarth and Micah did. I think that Ezra might have just gotten lucky. I didn't realize too much of a difference while I was watching them, Ezra just ended up getting all the right pieces together. One difference I did notice was that Micah and Siddharth were both looking for 2 pieces to fit together, while Ezra was looking to fill in the cube shape. The cube is much easier to solve a second time. I think this is because of the fact that finding where the first piece would go is the hardest part. After that people find the rest of the puzzle easy. None of them gave up, which isn't surprising. None of them made a unique model, which is expected because I gave them the first step to solving the puzzle my way. I feel like I can't learn too much from this data as I only took data from 3 people. If I had more people I would be able to come up with a more accurate hypothesis. In conclusion, I would say that an average person would take 5 minutes to finish this puzzle. without hints and 3 min with hints.