Wierd/Strange/Interesting Assignments

[Nate]

Have you ever had to do some homework that was just way too interesting or wierd to count as schoolwork?

I ask because I just finished a uni assignment (probably the biggest one I've ever done) to write a program that controls two trains on a model track so that they'll never crash.

In my final year of school I did a 1500 word essay on Dawson's Creek and Welcome Back Kotter. Needless to say, I got an A+.

[SeaRex]

I wrote an essay on Tarantino's use of dialogue in "Pulp Fiction." Got a 98% on it too.

In Mythology class, we had to make a board game. In a group. I swear, I felt like I was in elementary school.

[Hobo]

In Mythology class

Um mythology class? Explainage, sounds like a complete doss to me

Um, as for weird assignments, not really, just putting a hobo who lives in my town into Room 101 for an english speaking. Most amusing

[SeaRex]

Um mythology class? Explainage, sounds like a complete doss to me

Oh, it is.

It was an elective (optional) English class, and a complete and total waste of my time.

Greeco-Roman, etc.

[Dino]

I've been getting some strange ones too, and when I asked the professor about it, he told me that it was part of a scheme to make the learning more relevant and appealing to a broader range of students, as well as sparking creativity and enthusiasm, which produces much better results as well as being a more accurate reflection of student ability. He added that interesting assignments give students the same level of enthusiasm they would get if they were in a job that appealed to them.

I agree with this. I (and my employer) have found that since working in the industry, I have produced much better results than I did during any of the courses that I took in the past. Since entering university my work has improved even more, with a whole range of assignments that allow for interests and imagination to develop. For instance, one assignment I got recently was to design a clock, that is NOT allowed to look ordinary, it MUST be bizarre, and I was literally overflowing with ideas - this was as part of a set of out-of-the-ordinary design pieces, that included a car, a creature, a house, and furnature. You get a bonus point if you string them together with a matching theme.

[Leto]

That sounds pretty awesome, Dino. All we get in art class is how to draw a straight line... For all of the year! Yayz0rz... -_-

Nothing really out of mediocre status for homework for me... But a few times I could review games, and it didn't really seem like homework. Otherwise, just crap about A Midsummer Nights Dream.

[Nate]

Hey Dino, have you got any pictures/designs of those clocks? I was thinking about designing a clock myself a couple of months ago. I made a few designs before homework kinda took over.

[Dino]

Hey Dino, have you got any pictures/designs of those clocks? I was thinking about designing a clock myself a couple of months ago. I made a few designs before homework kinda took over.

I've not got a scanner rigged up to this particular PC, but I could probably copy some of the designs into MS Paint and just upload them here. I'll have a go anyways...

[Dino]

OK this is a pretty basic drawing but it's as close as I could get to the original design. It's got lots of details missing, but you can see the basic concept and stylising. The pendulum rocks the balance bob, which turns the gears, and a seperate pendulum pumps water into the weight, which drains out through the bottom of the weight into the collection pan. This makes sure that the weight is light when it's down, and heavy when it's up. Also the mechanism has a kinetic limiter, which helps to even out the motion. The two balance bobs are linked, so that they move in sync, but the second balance bob has a pendulum to reduce kinetic energy loss.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and also the hands move in a circular trajectory around the face circumferance, rather than from the middle of the face. This simplifies the mechanism somewhat.

[Nate]

Wow... Rather more interesting than what I was doing. I was just plagiarising this watch.

[Dino]

That's still pretty interesting. One of the students came up with something similar which was simply two rotating drums, both with numbers printed on the outside, one of which being numbered 00 to 59, the other numbered 1 to 12. It was arranged so that when the drum rotated to as far as 59, it began to rotate the hour drum to the next number, and by the time the minute drum had reached 00 again, the hour had fully changed.

That was just one of the simpler ones. The top scorer out of all the designs was a perpetual permanent magnet motor powered clock, that had a really seriously funky design. It looked like a Giger piece.

[soulstice]

I once had to do an assignment about doing an assignment. Was very strange.