Divergent thinking : from creativity to catastrophe ...

A very useful exercise, and one engaged in to some extent most probably every day though widely overlooked. Just as curiosity, I'm throwing it out there :

What uses does one find or has one found for things, which not what uses the things were conceived for, tend to work out (or not) ? :huh:

This could entail anything as simple as using fingernail clippers as a pencil sharpener or a cat/dog as a napkin, to more elaborate divergent thinking scenarios.

Don't worry, this is not an underhanded method of giving a psycho-technical test, it is just a discussion (possibly in some cases a confession)

I didn't know whether to put this in General Discussions or in Humour, but as even things here can be "fun", here it is.

Your turn ...

I've used dice as a projectile to throw at people...

A metal book stand, for reading a book in the kitchen whilst cooking, worked great as a laptop stand to keep it upright and help venting heat up and out quicker.

I use a pair of axle stands as a barbell bench. A bit dangerous but I'm too cheap to buy something else and I do not have a lot of room.

I also have a habit of using (new) toilet rolls instead of a tissue box, because its cheaper and last longer :ohmy:

I made a battery with coins to operate my meccano digger when i was a kid.

Many times I have used a music stand to hold up blueprints!

I suppose I (we?) do this to some extent all the time. The first thought I had when reading the question, though, was when I wanted to fill the base of a Wavemaster kicking bag in my martial arts school with water. The top didn't fit up to the faucet and there was no hose in sight. So I removed the foam coating from the beginner's nunchucks and used it as a flexible hose/funnel to run water from the faucet to the Wavemaster. Worked beautifully and saved me a lot of time.

I was on the team that added an AMDWS workstation to the FAAD/C-RAM architecture, a simple fix that probably saved Big Army millions of dollars and thousands of aggravated soldier-hours.