Rube Goldberg Machine

What is a Rube Goldberg Machine?

A Rube Goldberg Machine is an invention, contraption and a device that is over-engineered to perform a simple task in a complex amount of steps and chain reactions. A "Rube Goldberg Machine" is named after the cartoonist himself Reuben Lucius Goldberg and there are many contests out there that inspires people to be creative by making a machine that performs a basic task in a very complicated way.

Landon going to school

My STEM group, Lindsey, Zachary and I created a school themed Rube Goldberg machine in a time span of about 3-4 weeks as our first project in our STEM class. Completing this project was pretty difficult since Covid-19 didn't let us interact and test new ideas in person at the campus. We decided to go with a school theme for out rube goldberg machine and there is a boy named Landon that represents himself going to school through chain reaction steps of machinery. In our machine, we included 15 steps (which we splitted between the three of us), 5 simple machines, 4 energy transfers and the 3 elements of design.

In the end, I was very happy and proud of my teammates and myself for completing a functional Rube Goldberg Machine through distance learning. My expectations were very discouraging since I didn't believe that I was ready to take on the difficulties through zoom and being limited to only help verbally and not by showing examples in person with my group. My group and I finished the project within the limit of 15 steps and the last step represents a task by Landon stapling his school papers to turn it in so it flows with the school theme imagery. There was a lot of calculations of the physics behind the machine and I calculated the physic variables for my steps such as its Mechanical Advantage, Velocity, Potential Energy, Kinetic Energy and more.

Rube Goldberg slide Presentation