Rube Goldberg Machine
Reflection:
New Skills: I learned a few new skills over the course of this project. However, I think that my Critical Thinking skills and my Conscientious learning were the two many ones. For Critical Thinking, I learned how to solve a problem once it had already been created like when our theme got changed and we had to incorporate new elements to make it work. For the Conscientious Learning part, I think I learned how to be more open to the ideas of others like when we needed a ramp but the others wanted a wedge.
Challenges: There were many challenges when it came to this project. I think that the two problems were collaboration and communication. In our group collaboration was a bit challenging because we all had ideas that we wanted and only so many could go into our project. For communication, it was hard because we would all start building our own separate pieces and then change things without telling the other which led to so much discourse among the group members but in the end, we were all happy with the final result.
Content: For most of the content you can see it in our slide show just to the right. However, I will explain it.
Velocity: For the velocity you can see it present in the marble and tube. This exact velocity will be listed in the slide show
Acceleration: For acceleration, you can also see it present in the tube and marble because of the motion of the marble.
Force: The force was located in every aspect of the machine
Work: The work was again located in every aspect of our machine
Potential Energy: The PE was located at the baseball and wedge part of our ramp because the ball was held at an incline ready to roll down
Kinetic Energy: KE was located in the boat ramp step of our machine and was there because the boat has KE while it is moving down the ramp
Mechanical Advantage: The MA was located in steps six and seven of our machine
Simple Machines: In our machine, we include all the simple machines like a pulley or wedge.
Most final calculations are listed in our slide show.
The Planning
For our first stem project, we did a Rube Goldberg machine. For this project, we worked in groups of four and created our machine from wood and other materials. We started by designing our blueprint. It took a few rough drafts but we eventually settled on our final draft.
Starting the Building
Once we got access to the Maker Space we started selecting our materials and our baseboard. We led out our major supports and components on our board and got a general idea of where we wanted everything to go. We screwed in the supports and started attaching the ramps. As half of the group worked on putting the ramps on the other half worked on painting the background.
Finish Building/Presenting
For the last few days of the project, we finished up our building. We painted some of the ramps and added details like our boat and our wheel and axel. During this stage, we also created our Google slide show to present. We finished our project and then just tested and tested to make sure that it would work a good amount of the time. Then we presented out project on Rube Goldberg Night.