101 Activities For Teaching Creativity And Problem Solving

Combinations 139

Mad Scientist Handout

To illustrate Mad Scientist, the Green and Red Die lists for the problem of improving a

briefcase might be set up as shown in Table 6.2.

Green Die

123456

Places Materials Shape Weird Function Flavors

Boardroom Leather Round Elvis Sprinkling Cherry

Home Plastic Square Pickles Weight Lemon

Office Diamond Sphere Frogs Sorting Strawberry

Kitchen Metal Flat Madonna Flying Chocolate

Red Die

Storage Time Closures Weird Function Sizes

Pockets Morning Zippers Superman Reminders Executive

Boxes Afternoon Button Crystal Wake Up Compact

Shelves Tea Snaps Ears Typing Overnight

Files Noon Straps Birthday Faxing Regular

Table 6.2 Mad Scientist Table

To illustrate this exercise, assume that your group has been assigned the challenge of

improving a briefcase. Someone in your group rolls the green die and gets a 4 (“weird”)

and rolls the red die and gets a 1 (“storage”). You then can use the words in these cate-

gories as stimuli by examining single words or combining different words from the two

categories. Here are some sample ideas from these two categories:

• An Elvis briefcase shaped like a guitar with a picture of the “King” on the side (from
  “Elvis”)


• A compartment with a cold pack to keep food from spoiling (from “pickles” and
  “pockets”)


• Folding legs to turn a briefcase into a display case (from “frogs”)


• A briefcase with a built-in, battery-powered compact disc player (from “Madonna”
  and “boxes”)

101 Activities for Teaching Creativity and Problem Solving.Copyright © 2005 by John Wiley &

Sons, Inc. Reproduced by permission of Pfeiffer, an Imprint of Wiley. http://www.pfeiffer.com

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