Rude Goldberg Machine

This project was the very first project I did in STEM Marin. It is called a Rude Goldberg Machine and the concept is to build a working machine with 10 or more complex steps to accomplish a simple task. My group that consisted of Liam McMann, Caetano Lataliste, and Emma Krejsbol decided that the theme of our project would be basketball. To incorporate this into our project we decided that our machine would represent a basketball game and the two teams would consist of many different basketball legends and present day players.

The process of planning and building took about 5 weeks with the first week being based around blueprinting and brainstorming ideas. The next 3 weeks we set out to build our project with levers, ramps, screws, wedges, pulleys, and many complex and detailed steps. After completing the building phase of our project last week we finalized and ran tests on our machine, calculated the physics and energy transfers in our project, as well as created our presentation. Below is the final presentation along with the video of our working machine.

SCHEMATICS

While building our project we created blueprints that were detailed enough that someone could use them to rebuild our machine. At the beginning of the project we had our original blueprints but when we started building some things had to change like the location of our first lever, adding a ramp on the second level, and taking out the confetti box at the end.

CALCULATIONS

Some of the calculations that we found were velocity, acceleration, force, potential energy, kinetic energy, mechanical advantage:

Velocity=change of distance/change of time

Acceleration=change of velocity/change of time

Force=(mass)(acceleration)

Mechanical Advantage=distance effort/distance load

Potential energy=(mass)(acceleration due to gravity)(height)

Kinetic Energy=1/2(mass)(velocity)squared

KINETIC ENERGY(KE) AND POTENTIAL ENERGY(PE) TRANSFERS

Kinetic energy is the energy an object has due to motion and potential energy is the energy an object has at rest. They are both measured in Joules(J). In step 11 we found the transfer of PE to KE. To find PE I found the mass of the ball, the acceleration due to gravity, and the height, and then multiplied them giving the ball a PE of 0.01J. Then to find the KE I multiplied the divided the mass by 2 and multiplied that to the velocity squared to give it a KE of 0.005J. The means that 50% of the energy was converted and in all 4 of the energy transfers we included not all the energy was converted because it was lost due to rotational energy and friction.

SIMPLE MACHINES

The simple machines in our project were 5 ramps, 2 screws, 1 pulley, 1 wedge, and 2 levers. All of these machines helped us transfer energy, move the ball throughout the machine, and represent different plays in basketball such as dribbling, passing, and shooting.

CONSTRUCTION LOG

Aug. 30-Theme Brainstorm

Aug 31-Physical layout designs

Sep 1-Initial Blueprints

Sep 3- Cut out three shelves, gathered materials for screws and ramps

Sep 7-Gathered more materials for levers and split first pvc pipe

Sep 9-Drilled in one shelf and cut 2 more pvc pipes and funnel

Sep 10-Drilled in bottom 2 shelfs and built horizontal levers and hoops

Sep 14-Attached funnel and top ramp and built second lever

Sep 15-Drilled in dowels on second level and attached basketball hoops

Sep 17-Built and attached second screw and drilled in bottom dowels

Sep 20-Put in bottom ramps and attached the guides

Sep 22-Built the pulley and buckets and attached the mini wedge

Sep 24-Nailed in pulley and cut out backings of drawings

Sep 27-Attached drawings and ran final tests

REFLECTION

In this project I felt that my group and I did very well and did many things right, especially this being our very first project. 2 skills that I developed include collaboration and communication. In my life I have not been a very loud person and have been known as shy but in this project I did a very good job collaborating with all my group members as well as communicating with them.

Throughout the project the members of my group as well as me all collaborate very well together. We all contributed ideas and listened to all of them no matter if they were good or bad. We never seemed to disagree and we all worked together well while brainstorming, building, and creating our presentation.

Also I think I communicated very well as I always gave out ideas and advice for everything. I believe that as a group we communicate our ideas clearly and assertively. Communicating helped our group find ways to get through problems. For example one of the problems we faced was trying to find a way to drill in our shelves. We couldn't find the best angle to do this but everybody communicated out ideas and eventually we came up with the best way.

2 things that I would like to work on are my problem solving and building skills because I feel that in this first project they were not the greatest.

For example when we encountered a problem when we had no paint at the end of the project, thinking back I would rather have found a way to still show each shelf as a court instead of just leaving them with no color. I think that I could have gotten paint from outside of school or colored it in some other way.

Also I feel that I wasn't always good at building the actual structure in our machine. I think that I could have been more focused when it comes to drilling, sawing, and cutting. I think that I wasn't very good at cutting our pipes, drilling in holes, and sawing the pieces of wood. I think that I could have done better and helped us build with more efficiency.