Rube Goldberg Machine
A Rube Goldberg Machine is a series of events that trigger one event after another until the final event.
In five weeks my group members and I created our own Rube Goldberg Machine. Our machine is based on a bowling alley and it is applied with different mechanical components based on physics. However because of our blueprints we had to interoperate our theme in most of our steps . To emphasize our theme we included smashed CD pieces and painted our ramps with neon colors on a black base to make our steps stand out more and interoperate the bowling alley look. To interest the audience more, our final step was another set of domino that can satisfy the audience with the satisfying noise. Here is our presentation in action.
Construction Log
Day 1: We completed our blueprint and then started measuring on our board where our pieces would go
Day 2: After copying our blueprint onto our board we brainstormed what class of wood would function the best with our blueprint and then began to measure each piece of wood.
Day 3: Screwed in our first 1 inch piece of wood which followed with a 20 inch piece beneath it with an incline.
Day 4: We start constructing our pulley and ran into several problems. The string we used broke, the cups started bending too much, and our first test run failed.
Day 5: We started to screw in our 18 inch piece of wood that would act as our lever. In order for the lever to move, we hammered in a nail and pulled it out a bit for it to be loose enough
Day 6: PVC pipe and drilled two holes to loop with string and stuff items in the back in order for the pipe to stay in place.
Day 7: We screwed the third ramp with a 18 inch wood piece. We replace the 14 inch wood piece with a thinner piece, and we moved the nails so they had a distance of 6.5 inches.
Day 8: Installed the fourth ramp which is 12 inches long horizontally so the domino's will balance. We attached a 6 inch cardboard piece vertically so the marble will bounce to the fourth ramp that is 12 inches long that was drilled in. We added a 6 inch wood piece vertically to insure that the marble would drop every time.
Day 9: We collected the five pre-sawed 3 inch stairs and drilled them in and made sure they had a 2 inch drop from each stair. Once that was completed we connected the last stair with a 4 inch long mini ramp that has an incline of 2 inches
Day 10: Drilling a hole then drilling a nail into the plastic screw allowed us to a just it anytime. And we saw in the test runs that the marble has a bit too much speed so we attached fabric on the fourth ramp, with about 3 inches of the board has doubled the fabric to slow it when it first drops.
Day 11: Our group screwed in our last ramp that is 18 ½ inches long with a 5 inch incline connected to a 8 inch flat board.
Day 12: We added a mini cardboard triangle wedge with string attached as our wedge.
Day 13: We completed the painting section of our project and started on the decorations for our theme (Bowling), so we massed a few CD’s and added a bit of hot glue to the back of the CD’s and placed them to the wood. We painted our title and the other words that represent parts of our project and we completed our final product.