Professor bach hands each of his students an eraser. he then asks them to list as many possible uses for the eraser as they can think of. which aspect of thought was professor bach exploring?

I believe the answer is: divergent thinking

divergent thinking refers to the process of generating new ideas by exploring various forms of possible solutions.

This type of thinking is usually very effective in creative setting (such as story writing) but really inefficient in analytic setting (such as criminal investigation)