Good morning fellow creativity wannabes, other people with actual talent, and confused people united by the fact that nobody can explain DI well.

Destination Imagination

Destination Imagination (D.I.) is a crazy, amazing, stressful, challenging, chaotic, exiting… experience. It is a competition between teams (within age groups) meant to teach young people to push themselves further, learn the importance of group work. D.I. Has taught me many vital things and explore deeper into my potential.

DI pushes us through challenges that we never thought we would ever face, like building an amusement park ride to go on mars, or building a robot to ride through a maze.

Monster Effects

This year my team chose the “Monster Effects” challenge (engineering) , which I think is rather comical considering that I did a monster challenge last year, and Kiera did the same engineering challenge last year.

Our Solution

Story

Though im not going to spoil all of it for you, I will tell you that the story is based on 3 people shipwrecked on the most remote island in the world Tristan de Cunha. My character (Clara) has been dating Nik’s character (Connor). Connor breaks up with Clara, and in angst she sings “In the Name of Love”- by U2. Then connor falls in love with a bird and the story unfolds…

Structure

Since I have knowledge in the field of architecture, as I am planning on being an architect after university (also cause I volunteered to), I was given the main role in designing and building our structure in stead of Taylor who was originally supposed to but was on a ski trip.

I used crosses to create triangles in the structure, as they are the strongest shape. I know that ass weight is added, in order to move down, the supports in a triangle formation like I had build would move out. To stop the forces put upon the structure to make it have an unbalanced weight distribution, I made sure to put opposite pushing angles on opposite sides, to direct the motion in a constant loop pushing itself in many directions causing nothing to actually move… Let me draw it for you.

Physics of K-NEAT’s structure (eo is for equal + opposite like in Newton’s laws)

Have you ever tried to sit on the chair and lift yourself up by pulling the bottom of the chair “up” towards you.. but not end up moving anywhere? It’s kinda like that.

K-NEAT – Group dynamic

My group this year was absolutely fantastic! It constituted of Kiera (who was assumed position of team leader and injected sense into our crazy ideas), Nik (a fantastic creative thinker who was a great drive in executing our plans), Emerson (a fantastic creative thinker who kept our group together and moving positively forwards), Taylor (a fantastic team member who is great at creating concepts and looking at a larger picture).

Unfortunatlely we didn’t get to work with Taylor much as she is a very talented and successful skier, and she was gone for most of regionals on ski trips.

What I Learned

One of the main things that I took away from the regionals tournament was a sence of pride, and knowledge that even though DI will always be stressful so long as you care, it can be manageable and even fun if you have a good group dynamic with people that you can support and get support from… kinda like the theory behind the structure. I learned what a team is supposed be, and ways to make our even better.

(I also learned how to make our performance and special effect work which was the whole reason for regionals – as a giant test for Provincials – but in retrospect none of that really matters to me now that it’s all over)

Bon Voyage!

Now that we knew what we needed to fix, and I knew that DI doesn’t always have to be an explosion leaving wakes of dead souls in its wake. We left for sping break, with a plan, and a spring in our step (Pun intended). We knew that we could accomplish anything together, and even though it would be a squeeze for time, Provincials could be conquered!