kudos to Lego marketing department for great viral
Tallest Lego building with 4 pieces?
81–90 of 102 posts
Re: Tallest Lego building with 4 pieces?
#82One commentator here questioned why is this on HN (and was DVd somewhat) There is the fact that dad teaches stuff to daughter. The lesson is fun and interactive. The concepts dealt with are pretty profound and can be quite deep: constraints, maxima and minima. Well done dad - you've covered some complex stuff in a fun and accessible way. Good skills. If anyone else doubts why this is valid Hacker News, they may want…
Slamming my nerd card down so hard the whole table spins around It's hacker news, not motivational team building shared insight news. I'd expect a GA solver which selected the four pieces which could be constructed into the tallest possible structure (with all the dirty tricks e.g. a boat hull attached to a wobbly assemblage of Giant Base/wing plates with a 12x24 brick balanced on the top), with a Speculation section…
Hah, my first thought was actually a boat hull a diamond building platform sail!
Re: Tallest Lego building with 4 pieces?
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, the whole elegance here is in the simplicity of the puzzle, and no child would get excited about anything like what you are suggesting. Unless you're missing a /s tag somewhere.
I think the sarcasm is too strong for it not to be a parody of the lightest-gray comments in this thread.
My opinion is 100% genuine and stupid. i don't read the comments.
Re: Tallest Lego building with 4 pieces?
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
Slamming my nerd card down so hard the whole table spins around It's hacker news, not motivational team building shared insight news. I'd expect a GA solver which selected the four pieces which could be constructed into the tallest possible structure (with all the dirty tricks e.g. a boat hull attached to a wobbly assemblage of Giant Base/wing plates with a 12x24 brick balanced on the top), with a Speculation section…
Such over-engineering does not smack of interesting material for a site called "hacker news". This is great material in itself, especially considering the context of education here.
> context of education
Oh, advancement through self-education? There's practically zero pedagogic content on HN. Or in this submission! How did the father guide his daughter? Through examples & showing a restricted subset of the problem? By following the technique in How to Solve It & steadfast avoiding showing the student anything but patiently & gently reminding them of what they know & which skill to apply in each circumstance?
Re: Tallest Lego building with 4 pieces?
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
Slamming my nerd card down so hard the whole table spins around It's hacker news, not motivational team building shared insight news. I'd expect a GA solver which selected the four pieces which could be constructed into the tallest possible structure (with all the dirty tricks e.g. a boat hull attached to a wobbly assemblage of Giant Base/wing plates with a 12x24 brick balanced on the top), with a Speculation section…
If novel solutions to trivial technical problems aren't of interest to hackers, I dunno what is.
> novel
The problem & solution seemed trivial, not novel: tallest structure with _these four_ pieces (get them on their sides) vs. _any four_ pieces (hmm what is the longest piece, will it be stable on its side, can they be stacked, what will help them stack, etc.)
Re: Tallest Lego building with 4 pieces?
#86kudos to Lego marketing department for great viral
LEGO Group marketing is on another level.
Re: Tallest Lego building with 4 pieces?
#87Ah, jacquesm bait, ok here is my solution (left), right one is an alternative to yours. http://imgur.com/a/h7HnB just the tops: http://imgur.com/a/wsqCw
As a former Lego building champion I couldn't resist ;-) http://imgur.com/a/TjXeO
Show with real parts that it remains standing. I tried building that one and could not get it to balance. Maybe you can find some position where the COG is over the little piece.
Re: Tallest Lego building with 4 pieces?
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bugger GA (whatever) thingies. I've got some super glue - stick all Lego bits together on their longest axis: problem solved as posed but probably not as intended. The large thing between my ears beats the crap out of a GA thingie any day, provided that the problem is loosely defined 8)
Does superglue work on Lego? I found that gluing pieces of plastic together (especially nice plastic like Lego) is the most challenging of all. Wood, paper, rubber, even metal with welding. The best experience I have with plastics is with PVC and the nasty chemical cements that temporarily dissolve the material. That said it would probably work well enough for this problem.
Yes it works like magic. PVC glue works as well.
Re: Tallest Lego building with 4 pieces?
#89Does this content really belong to hackernews?
Your comment got treated rather harshly, so let me try to explain. The post is on topic for HN because, although the question is a whimsical one, it gratifies intellectual curiosity (please see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ). Whimsical submissions like it have always been welcome here, as long as they're uncorrelated with anything that's appeared recently. (Sometimes people start doing the copycat…
also Lego have the hacker nature.
Re: Tallest Lego building with 4 pieces?
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel like they should be attached and not stacked? https://imgur.com/gallery/W13nR Fwiw: 10.3cm
https://i.imgur.com/zUl5AP8.jpg Measured 10.7cm: https://i.imgur.com/I637r2v.jpg What have you done to me!? Can't stop.
One of the conditions was that it should be able to stand on its own ('freestanding'), that one can't balance on the lower piece.