Now that its summer, all 3 of my sons are playing with their beyblades non-stop. Unfortunately, the beyblade stadium they have is a too small for all three of them to play at the same time. So for awhile, my oldest and I started making plans to make our own beyblade stadium. We considered making one out of a cardboard box, but didn’t think the surface would be smooth enough. Then my husband thought of an ingenious way to repurpose a winter toy as a beyblade stadium!
Beyblade Stadium Engineering: Repurposing to Solve a Problem
Many people believe engineers are always designing new technology. Making the next bigger and better widget. While this is true to some extent, creativity is not limited to always designing a new thing to solve a problem. Some time all you need to do is re-purpose something that already exists.
Designing a Space Writing Utensile
During college I interned for an aerospace company that worked for NASA. I remember a story they told me comparing the American and Russian space programs. The American astronauts requested a writing tool for space travel. All pens designs rely on gravity to force the ink down to the tip of the pen. So NASA engineers had to design a pen to be used in zero gravity. Russian astronauts made the same request. The Russian space program gave their astronauts a pencil.
Genius! While a zero gravity pen may sound awesome, the design of the pen required hours and resources to create. The Russian pencil only required a quick shopping trip.
You see, engineering isn’t always about creating fancy new technology. Engineering means finding creative solutions to a problem.
An Inventive Beyblade Stadium
This brings me to our beyblade stadium. While my son and I were busy thinking of different kinds of designs and materials we could use for our beyblade stadium, my husband was remembering a family vacation just over a year ago. In my post “Learning about Friction while Playing in the Snow“, we learned about friction while sledding down a hill.
My husband’s idea was to use one of the sleds as a stadium! Not only did we already have the sled, we also didn’t need to buy materials or spend time making a stadium!
Next we tried out our new stadium!
Our beyblade stadium worked perfectly! All 3 brothers were able to play with eachother at the same time. Perfect!
And it was easy to store under a bed. A big plus to me!
Can you think of anything else you can re-purpose to solve a problem you’re having right now? Don’t always rush to the store to buy something. Think like an Engineer, and reuse something you already have!