Rube Goldberg Machine

Description

Over the first 6 weeks in our Freshman STEM class groups of 4 students spent the time designing, and building our Rube Goldberg Machine. A Rube Goldberg Machine is a single motion-activated project, that uses a series of complex systems to end on a single motion. For our machine it included 10 steps using 5 different simple machines. This started with a car that hits a marble, the marble goes down a series of ramps and then falls into a cup. This cup is attached to other cups that fall when the first cup falls. Overall, multiple ideas and lots of thinking were put into our machine in order to make it work properly. 

Attached below is a slideshow and video showcasing our project and the steps behind it:   

Velocity: This is the rate of distance covered in a direction (how fast). Our machine had an average velocity of about 50 m/s.

Acceleration: This is the rate of change in velocity. This would depend on which part of our machine you focused on.

Force: Is a push or pull on an object to change its motion. Again, this would depend on which part of our machine you looked at.

Work: The energy that is put into something. Our machine had an average of .10  Joules of work. 

Potential Energy: The energy something possess at rest. Our machine only had PE in the car that traveled a short distance.

Kinetic Energy: This is the energy due to motion. Our machine had an average of  .0011 J of kinetic energy.

Mechanical Advantage. How many times easier a tool makes a task. This was represented in our seesaw that the car traveled over. This had a mechanical advantage of 1.

Simple Machines: The simple machines in our project were the ramps, pulley, inclined plane, funnel, and wedge.

The Construction Log, blueprints, and simple machines were all shown in our slideshow as well. 

Over the course of this project, I learned that I enjoyed working in  groups and building. There was lot's of collaboration, communication, and critical thinking involved with building the machine. Overall, I was a good conscientious learner and had lots of character culture competence. 

I would like to improve on my communication and empathy skills for my next project.