The Kit Kat Challenge!

60 seconds… 20 Kit Kats… 1 Tower!

Working with our good friends at Nestle, we recently ran the Nestle Kit Kat Challenge on campuses around the country.

The Challenge? Simply build the highest tower out of 20 Kit Kat Chunky’s in 60 seconds…

The Results? Read on to find out…

Aston University

The Kit Kat Challenge had its grand launch at Aston Uni last week and it seems to have been a big success! We had around 50 people take part, and had some cracking attempts. It’s surprising how passionate people can get when there is chocolate involved! Kit Kat fever quickly spread around the fair as we had a crowd of students eagerly awaiting their turn and discussing possible tactics.

The Results:

Prettiest tower goes to the guy who made a hexagon, however the winner was Rajni who managed to get to a height of 40.5cm.

The benchmark had now been set so our next stop, Manchester Uni, School of Computer Science had a lot to live up to!

Manchester School of Computer Science

After the success of the challenge at Aston Uni we were excited about seeing what Manchester would offer and we weren’t disappointed. It seems that the logical minds of the computer science students went into overdrive as they were measuring the Kit Kats and working out dimensions to help make their tower the tallest. After a period of strategic thinking, the students carefully began to build their towers. A note to future contenders however, no matter how much of a mathematical approach you take to the challenge, if you don’t have a steady hand then chances are it will topple!

It wasn’t just the students who were keen to take part in Manchester as a number of corporate reps also fancied their chances. After failing the challenge they then decided it was best to stick to eating Kit Kats rather than building with them!

The Results:

An ever persistent Ian managed to build a tower that was 43cm tall! This was however, after about 5 attempts and therefore didn’t count (sorry Ian!)

In light of this the winner was James whose tower reached 40cm (only 0.5cm behind Aston!)

University of Surrey

Our first evening Careers Fair and the fact that the event was held in a marquee on grass didn’t help those taking part in the Kit Kat Challenge (think uneven table and wobbly towers!). As always though, the Kit Kat Challenge went down well with the students, particularly the boxes of Kit Kats we were giving away!

The Results:

Plenty of great efforts here at Surrey, despite the best efforts of a number of students who were determined to eat the Kit Kats rather than build towers with them!

The winner was Sam, with a tower measuring an impressive 40cm…

Birmingham University

The next stop on the Kit Kat Challenge was Birmingham University Careers Fair. It didn’t take long for curiosity to set in and within no time students were grouping around the stall wondering what was going on (and also trying to pinch my Kit Kat Chunkies!) We had the most contenders so far at Birmingham, so hats off to them for their enthusiasm.

Also the award for most inventive structure currently sits with Birmingham as a group of students (who I believe were engineers) built not a tower, but a bridge out of Kit Kats. It wasn’t very tall but impressive non the less!

The Results:

Throughout the day Patrick and his team of merry men were leading with a height of 37cm, this was then matched, but Tom Barnett pipped everyone to the post with a height of 37.5cm. Not quite as tall as Aston but a good result still.

Loughborough University

Whilst Birmingham were attempting to conquer the Kit Kat challenge, Loughborough University were also having a go. Although getting off to a slow start things started to hot up in the last hour which saw the tallest tower to date and Loughborough crowned as the one to beat. Alongside setting records it got very exciting when the challenge started being filmed, giving students their 15 minutes of fame… check out the video below!

Having run the challenge at a few Universities we are seeing popular techniques appearing such as ‘the house of cards’ and ’stacking’. At up and coming events we would like to see more of these techniques emerging so remember to get creative!

Top tip to future contenders: Remember to go for height not stability!!!

Highest tower was a staggering 43.5cm!!! Congratulations Loughborough!

Our friends at Career Player recently followed us to the Loughborough Careers Fair to record the event…

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The Kit Kat Challenge Grand Final!

15 universities were graced by the Kit-Kat Challenge and February saw the Grand Final at Nestle HQ in York! The challenge? It was a Kit-Kat Challenge like you’ve never seen before…

The preliminary stages had a total of 20 Kit-Kat Chunky’s to stack in 60 seconds, the Grand Final involved a total of 200 Kit-Kat Chunky’s and 5 minutes to build the highest tower possible!

The winner? A student from the University of Manchester managed a massive 110cm!! Here’s a photo of the monster!