Rube Goldberg Machine
A Rube Goldberg machine is a machine that makes simple tasks complicated. I will tell you the brief history of rube goldberg machines in general, then tell you the history of our machine. After that I will tell you the concepts I learned.
History of the Rube Goldberg Machine
Rube Goldberg was born on July 4, 1883 in San Francisco. He went to UC Berkeley and majored in engineering. After he graduated he was an engineer for the San Francisco water and sewer department. After six months of that, he quit and worked for the sports department for the San Francisco newspaper. It was there he started sending his famous cartoons until his work finally got published. He then he moved to New York to work for the Evening Mail to draw his cartoons. So that is the brief history of how the rube goldberg machines came to be.
History of OUR Machine
During September 2013, we made our machine. We had many tasks to choose from and we chose to stamp a piece of paper. We then made a blueprint and brainstormed our ideas. After a couple days of brainstorming, we did a thing called Critical Friends, which is where we meet up with other groups and talked about our machines. After that we started building our machine. But, we had problems very quickly. We had to find a working lever and pulley. We tried to work it out until the last week before it was due. So we went to one of my group member's house. There we changed our project to the School Bell. And we put our final touches on it. Then the last week of our project, we worked on our presentation piece. Then on Thursday, September 26 we had our Rube Goldberg night. We showed our machines to the public and got judged by judges and we did well.
Steps of our Rube Goldberg Machine
In my group, I had Logan Sheehan, Amritha Somasekar, and Ananya Somasekar. Our first idea was stamping a piece of paper. But, that was to hard to figure out so we changed to the ringing of the bell. The steps of the final project are:
Physics that we used
The physics / engineering concepts with this unit are potential energy, Mechanical Advantage, work, force, speed, and five of the six simple machines. The first six in the list are formulas. Potential energy is mass x gravitational acceleration x height. Mechanical advantage is output force/ input force. Work is force x distance. Force is mass x acceleration. The final formula that I used was speed which is distance/ time.
Simple Machines
The five simple machines that I used are the screw, lever, pulley, incline plane, and the wedge. A screw is an incline plan that goes around an object. A lever is a bar on top of a fulcrum that is used to transmit force. A pulley is used to lift objects up and down. An incline plane is used to lift an object a certain height with less work. And finally, a wedge is used to force apart objects.
Reflection
As always there are some upsides and downsides to my project. We did well on the final project. It looks nice and it worked every time because we didn't have dominoes. A word to the wise, I wouldn't recommend dominoes because they fall over really easily and it takes a while to set them up perfectly. Another thing that we did well was collaboration. We came up with a lot of ideas and none of the group said it was a bad idea. An example of this was when I gave out the idea of using scissors to cut the string holding the stamp up. I thought it was a bad idea, but none of my group said it was a bad idea. One bad thing that I need to work on is concentration. I walked around the classroom a lot because I was bored. The solution to this is to stay in my group, be willing to do anything, and act like I am focused. The other thing I need to work on is giving out more ideas. To do this, I need to research at home.
History of the Rube Goldberg Machine
Rube Goldberg was born on July 4, 1883 in San Francisco. He went to UC Berkeley and majored in engineering. After he graduated he was an engineer for the San Francisco water and sewer department. After six months of that, he quit and worked for the sports department for the San Francisco newspaper. It was there he started sending his famous cartoons until his work finally got published. He then he moved to New York to work for the Evening Mail to draw his cartoons. So that is the brief history of how the rube goldberg machines came to be.
History of OUR Machine
During September 2013, we made our machine. We had many tasks to choose from and we chose to stamp a piece of paper. We then made a blueprint and brainstormed our ideas. After a couple days of brainstorming, we did a thing called Critical Friends, which is where we meet up with other groups and talked about our machines. After that we started building our machine. But, we had problems very quickly. We had to find a working lever and pulley. We tried to work it out until the last week before it was due. So we went to one of my group member's house. There we changed our project to the School Bell. And we put our final touches on it. Then the last week of our project, we worked on our presentation piece. Then on Thursday, September 26 we had our Rube Goldberg night. We showed our machines to the public and got judged by judges and we did well.
Steps of our Rube Goldberg Machine
In my group, I had Logan Sheehan, Amritha Somasekar, and Ananya Somasekar. Our first idea was stamping a piece of paper. But, that was to hard to figure out so we changed to the ringing of the bell. The steps of the final project are:
- Double screw
- Marble Collision
- Pulley Drop
- Lever up
- Ball rolling down the lever
- Incline Plane and wedge
- Funnel
- Funnel to the inclined plane
- Marble bump
- Bell Ringing
Physics that we used
The physics / engineering concepts with this unit are potential energy, Mechanical Advantage, work, force, speed, and five of the six simple machines. The first six in the list are formulas. Potential energy is mass x gravitational acceleration x height. Mechanical advantage is output force/ input force. Work is force x distance. Force is mass x acceleration. The final formula that I used was speed which is distance/ time.
Simple Machines
The five simple machines that I used are the screw, lever, pulley, incline plane, and the wedge. A screw is an incline plan that goes around an object. A lever is a bar on top of a fulcrum that is used to transmit force. A pulley is used to lift objects up and down. An incline plane is used to lift an object a certain height with less work. And finally, a wedge is used to force apart objects.
Reflection
As always there are some upsides and downsides to my project. We did well on the final project. It looks nice and it worked every time because we didn't have dominoes. A word to the wise, I wouldn't recommend dominoes because they fall over really easily and it takes a while to set them up perfectly. Another thing that we did well was collaboration. We came up with a lot of ideas and none of the group said it was a bad idea. An example of this was when I gave out the idea of using scissors to cut the string holding the stamp up. I thought it was a bad idea, but none of my group said it was a bad idea. One bad thing that I need to work on is concentration. I walked around the classroom a lot because I was bored. The solution to this is to stay in my group, be willing to do anything, and act like I am focused. The other thing I need to work on is giving out more ideas. To do this, I need to research at home.
rube goldberg presentation.pdf | |
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