Rube Goldberg Machine:
About our Project:
I worked with (from left to right) : Colin, Sterling, Annabel, and myself, Kate. We started building on September 3, 2014 and finished on September 30, 2014.
Our picture of what we wanted our project to look like before we began building was completely different then what it looks like now.
Rube Goldberg: Flag on the Moon Project History and Final Outcome:
Let us just say that every project will always have to be changed, especially our Rube Goldberg project. We pretty much changed the whole thing. We started off drilling the two boards together and painting our whole board because we didn’t want to do it last minute. After that we started building! We took a long time making the peg board and then began making the inclined planes and levers, all of which were made out of wood. We soon drilled them into the board; we started going pretty slow in the beginning of all of this because most teams were near done. When we put the lever under our pegboard, it didn’t work for us. We didn't have enough room to have two levers underneath the peg board so we tried using just one instead. The pulley wasn’t working and the lever was starting to act up and it became super complicated to get the lever and the pulley to work together.
We decided to just get rid it and start from the top again. We basically had to change the rest of our project entirely. We came up with a brilliant idea to simultaneously have one marble go over the pegboard, and have multiple marbles go through the pegboard into a cup. The cups job was to bring a “fence” up releasing the marble on top of the pegboard to continue on its path. We decided to make these big changes last minute, so we were a little flustered. We even added funnels that acted as screws at the top so it would be easier to drop multiple marbles simultaneously. Most of the time the marbles would get stuck somewhere and be totally annoying but we kept making changes and fixing it. The marble would then go off onto the levers. We put two levers there, but we soon changed the second lever into an inclined plane because it would toss the marble off track. The marble would then go through a screw followed by type of weird maze like inclined plane and hit a steel marble that rolled down a yet another inclined plane. The marble would ride down and hit a basket that was held down by a little piece of a nail on the end of the inclined plane. The marble would knock the basket off of the nail releasing our flag to drop onto the moon. We used a pulley to drop the flag. Simultaneously the marble that knocked off the basket would keep rolling on another inclined plane and hit one domino into a pile of flour and make a “POOF” like the moon dust when the flag sticks into the moon.
Our project definitely looks different then we originally planned, but I guess that was only for the best, because now it works. Whenever we try the whole thing out, it does take some time because it isn’t perfect, but it does work! We did get some blood in the job with all the drills, but overall it was a great project and was really fun.
Let us just say that every project will always have to be changed, especially our Rube Goldberg project. We pretty much changed the whole thing. We started off drilling the two boards together and painting our whole board because we didn’t want to do it last minute. After that we started building! We took a long time making the peg board and then began making the inclined planes and levers, all of which were made out of wood. We soon drilled them into the board; we started going pretty slow in the beginning of all of this because most teams were near done. When we put the lever under our pegboard, it didn’t work for us. We didn't have enough room to have two levers underneath the peg board so we tried using just one instead. The pulley wasn’t working and the lever was starting to act up and it became super complicated to get the lever and the pulley to work together.
We decided to just get rid it and start from the top again. We basically had to change the rest of our project entirely. We came up with a brilliant idea to simultaneously have one marble go over the pegboard, and have multiple marbles go through the pegboard into a cup. The cups job was to bring a “fence” up releasing the marble on top of the pegboard to continue on its path. We decided to make these big changes last minute, so we were a little flustered. We even added funnels that acted as screws at the top so it would be easier to drop multiple marbles simultaneously. Most of the time the marbles would get stuck somewhere and be totally annoying but we kept making changes and fixing it. The marble would then go off onto the levers. We put two levers there, but we soon changed the second lever into an inclined plane because it would toss the marble off track. The marble would then go through a screw followed by type of weird maze like inclined plane and hit a steel marble that rolled down a yet another inclined plane. The marble would ride down and hit a basket that was held down by a little piece of a nail on the end of the inclined plane. The marble would knock the basket off of the nail releasing our flag to drop onto the moon. We used a pulley to drop the flag. Simultaneously the marble that knocked off the basket would keep rolling on another inclined plane and hit one domino into a pile of flour and make a “POOF” like the moon dust when the flag sticks into the moon.
Our project definitely looks different then we originally planned, but I guess that was only for the best, because now it works. Whenever we try the whole thing out, it does take some time because it isn’t perfect, but it does work! We did get some blood in the job with all the drills, but overall it was a great project and was really fun.
We used 5 out of the 6 simple Machines:
-inclined plane- a flat supporting surface tilted at an angle, with one end higher than the other (equations: 1-ma=l/h ma=.18/.1 ma=1.8 2: ma=l/h ma=.18/.09 ma=2 3: ma=l/h ma=.21/.o1 ma= 21 4: ma=l/h ma= .11/.02 ma=5.5 5: ma=l/h ma=.12/.05 ma=2.4 6: ma=l/h ma=.27/.05 ma=5.4) -pulley-a wheel with a grooved rim around which a cord passes. It acts to change the direction of a force applied to the cord and is chiefly used (typically in combination) to raise heavy weights -lever-a rigid bar resting on a pivot, used to help move a heavy or firmly fixed load with one end when pressure is applied to the other -screw- a mechanism that converts rotational motion (equations: <screw #3> ma=13/1 ma=13) -wedge-a piece of wood, metal, or some other material having one thick end and tapering to a thin edge, that is driven between two objects or parts of an object to secure or separate them (equations: ma= l/w ma=.1/.01 ma=10) We unfortunately did not end up using the wheel and axle, though I am sure we would have tried to if we had more time. We had many every transfers even though the requirement was only 4. |
Our project was 13 steps even though the requirement was only 10.
1. 5 marbles are dropped into funnel 1 at the same time as 1 marble is dropped into funnel 2 (both funnels act as screws) 2. inclined plane a with 5 marbles going down it 3. inclined plane b with one marble going down it 4. the 5 marbles from inclined plane a go through peg board 5. 5 marbles from peg board fall into cup on pulley and lift gate releasing marble on inclined b 6. marble on inclined plane b falls onto inclined plane c 7. from inclined plane c it falls onto our lever 8. from the lever it falls onto inclined plane d 9. falls into screw 10. falls down inclined plane e/maze at the end of which knocks off a steel marble 11. origional marble and steel marble go down inclined plane e and knock basket off of nail 12. basket on pulley flies up into air and flat falls down into moon 13. marbles continue rolling onto inclined plane f and hit domino which falls in to moon dust (flour) making a "poof" |
One of these slides was meant to play a video though it does not work in this format. The video can be seen below.
Reflection:
I thought this project was really fun and a great way to get to know other people in our class if we didn't already know them. I learned how to use power tools and build something that actually did what I wanted it to. It helped me learn to work with others even when (on certain days) I really didn't want to.
Our group did a good job at working together there were bumps at time but we all came together to solve the problems and continue working on it. There was definitely a lot of equations to solve which at times was difficult but we all worked together to solve them. I could have had more patience with others and let them help me more when I was doing certain things but I tend to be very independent, so I hope to get better at letting people in and working together more for the future.