Tell me about Cognitive Contstruction Challenges

I have my favorite teacher for only 4 periods a week, but those 4 periods are the best. He gives us eclectic and miscellaneous challenges, and I shall give you an example.

The most recent one we did was a challenge about insulating a cup. We were given a plastic bag, a Dixie cup, a 2ft*4ft sheet of tin foil, 2 sheets of notebook paper, 10 cotton balls and 4 rubber bands. We were allowed to use pretty much any tool we needed. To decide the winner, hot water was poured into the cups, and sat in the cups for 5 minutes. Whoever kept theirs the hottest won, which was my partner and I.

Do you have any challenges like this? Forcing resourcefulness and breeding creativity via constraint? If so, please give me all the details!

Back in high school I had a technology class where we had a few games

Building an egg holder that would survive a fall off the stadium, making a race car (using rubberband, straw, paper clips, paper and see who made it the farthest), multiple times when our teacher was absent we would make something to try and hold up textbooks (with only like 4 notecard and a small piece of tape), and paper airplane competitions.

But I'm not creative enough to win those types of things, all I can do is make something that looks like it might work.

But it was a tech class, and most of the people in there knew how to do important life skills. While I didn't even learn how to cook or wash clothes till my second year of college...