So last Tuesday, the English majors proved to dominate all other majors at SUNY Cortland. Okay, I’m kidding, but we did succeed in a challenging/ almost impossible task that no one else in class could figure out.

The class I am currently taking in EDU371 which is Foundations of Modern Education with Joseph Rayle. Professor Rayle was explaining to our class that it is really difficult to assess students on the same thing, especially for IQ tests, when all students excel in different areas.

Here was our task/activity: We were given a wooden block with a nail in it. We were also given about 7 other nails. Groups of 4 people. I worked with Sarah Messmer, Kaylin Lemchek and Emily Heyden…the English girls

“The object of the challenge is to balance all of the nails on the head of a single nail. All of the nails have to be balanced at the same time and cannot touch anything but the top of the nail that is stuck in the base. If you’re really ambitious, you can try your luck at our large-scale version using landscape nails and a friend as the base. Enough of this idle chatter… get balancing!”  Take a look at this site to see the demonstration:

It took the class about a half hour for just one group to figure this out. Our group tried everything!!! We finally got it!!

With Sarah’s brilliant idea of weaving and Emily and Kaylin’s steady hands along with myself holding the block, we were successful!

English Majors=Success

Whoever said English Majors were bad at science, were wrong! Good work Team!!!

(Sarah and our completed task)