Rube Goldberg Machine
Use of Physics & Reflection
Use of Physics
Velocity
Velocity is the speed at which an object is traveling in a particular direction. The unit used for velocity is meters per second. We discovered the velocity of the car going down the ramp by recording a stopwatch in slow motion and seeing how long it took to travel the last inch of length (0.0254 meters).
Acceleration
Acceleration is how fast an object changes in speed. You can calculate it by dividing the change of velocity by the change of time. It's unit is meters over seconds squared. Acceleration in our Rube Goldberg machine could be seen due to the balls velocity constantly increasing over time. This was due to gravity's acceleration.
Force
Force is something that influences an object. You can calculate force by multiplying mass and acceleration. The unit force uses is newtons. A few of our slides showed calculations involving force. One of which was the force of the collision of two marbles. By multiplying the mass and acceleration of the small marble, we discovered the force it hit the larger marble with was 0.0392N.
Work
Work is the amount of energy put into something. You can calculate it by multiplying force and distance. It is also equivalent to change of potential energy and change of kinetic energy. The unit used is joules. The ball launcher (lever) in our project is hit at 6.6N and the distance from the fulcrum is 0.063m. That means the work of the hit is 0.416J.
Potential Energy
Potential energy is the amount of energy an object can get based on it's position. The unit used is joules. One of the calculations in our project included the potential energy of a fall. The formula is mass multiplied by gravity multiplied by change of height. The mass of the ball was 0.014kg, gravity is 9.8m/s², and change of height was 0.056m. That means the potential energy of the fall is 0.0077J.
Kinetic Energy
Kinetic energy is the amount of energy an object has due to motion. The formula is mass divided by two multiplied by velocity squared. The unit of kinetic energy is joules. An example of kinetic energy seen within our project is when the potential energy from a ramp drop is turned to kinetic energy. Due to kinetic energy and potential energy being inversely proportional, the 0.0077J of potential energy gets turned into 0.0077J of kinetic energy.
Mechanical Advantage
Mechanical Advantage is how many times easier a tool makes something. It can be calculated by dividing effort distance by load distance. However, other factors could play a part on altering the mechanical advantage. To get the real mechanical advantage you divide force load by force effort. We had lots of components with mechanical advantage in our project. One of which was the hockey stick (lever). The effort distance was 0.02m and the load distance was 0.55m. The result of dividing these values is a mechanical advantage of 0.36.
Simple Machines
Simple machines are mechanisms which have a mechanical advantage. The ones our group used was a screw, wheel and axle, pulley, inclined plane, and lever. My favorite one of them all was the screw. With the amount of spins the ball could get, the screw had a mechanical advantage of 14.
Reflection
Overall, I really enjoyed this project and think it was a great project to start of my STEM experience with. In the beginning when we first heard about it, I thought it was going to be a small, and easy project that would only take a few days to complete. It didn't me very long to realize that this project would require a lot of attention, time, patience, teamwork, etc. I know for a fact that I couldn't have done this project by myself and for that I thank my group members Lucas, Ayham, and Stan. We all had talked a few times before, but I think that this project brought us all closer as peers. I think that we did a good job of including everyone and listening to each others ideas.
The first thing we had to do was brainstorm themes for the machine. Total we thought of about thirty, but then we had to narrow it down to one. This was a big challenge for us, because there were so many different themes we all loved equally. In the end we thought of which theme would be a realistic choice that we were capable of and we chose sports. Looking back at our project, I feel that we could've expressed the theme more in our final project, but we still did a good job incorporating it. After that we just drew out ideas and merged them all together to create our initial blueprint. After that, we build from the top down, and made adjustments as we went. Once we finished building me and one of my group mates finalized the machine and worked on the final blueprint, while the other two group members worked on our google slide presentation. To me this shows that we were coordinated and communicating with each other thought the project, to share the work load and get the project done and ready to present.
Although I think that I helped my group and did a lot of work, there are some things that I definitely could've done better, that I will focus on improving on our next group project. Thinking back to the when we were in the maker-space, I tended to get distracted by what other groups were doing and not completely focusing on my my group. I remember I wandered around sometimes seeing what other groups were working on. After the first collaboration log, I realized what was happening, and I contributed to building more, and stayed with my own group.
In the end, we finished our machine and presentation by the due date. We put a lot of effort and time into it, and im glad we got to share it with family, friends, and judges. It was a really building our Rube Goldberg Machine and I am looking forward for more projects in the near future.