I took a two hour assessment class at George Fox University to see if I wanted to joint their program.  One of the activities was to erect a tower with Tinker toys, while collaborating  with your assigned group (cohort).  We had 20 minutes of planning, then 4 minutes to build.  We had a good time, lots of fun.  We lost by 4 inches, even though our tower was engineered so much better than the other group, we still lost.  The objective was to make sure that it stood for over 1 min after the 4 minutes was up, and whomever had the tallest tower won.  The other team just started putting tinker toys on top of each other until their's was higher.  We still had fun, and we learned a lot.  We went for the cork screw design so the weight of the tower would counter balance while equally applying pressure to hold the tower together.