Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Slinky Challenge (#006)

The Toys in Space Challenge started with Apollo 8 taking Silly Putty into Space. After the Challenge had been up for a year or so, the answer (Apollo 8) was no longer difficult to find.

So the next iteration was "On what NASA mission was Slinky first taken into space?" That was an intermediate challenge that required searching the NASA database. With the profusion of information, it was only a matter of time until a simple word query was able to find an answer without searching anything other than Google's database.

Today, the challenge reads: "Who commanded the first NASA mission to take a Slinky toy into space?"  This no longer requires finding the right database to query, but it does require some strategy and careful skimming of results. Using the FIND command is also helpful in sorting through pages of content looking for a relevant term--i.e., one of the keywords you used. Using fewer rather than more keywords is also helpful. It may also help to think of how an answer might be worded and use those keywords. I'd be interested in hearing what strategies or techniques you use in finding the answer.

This is the sixth 'refreshed' Challenge. My goal is to keep at least 10 Challenges up-to-date that focus on slightly different search skills.

Try the Challenge

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