I think testing is the most important part of the Rube Goldberg project because one finds out what does not work and can fix it. Our group got stuck on what to do after the sticks and the cups. Cy’s idea was to have cars go down a Hot Wheel track. The Hot Wheel track had a lever to release the cars. Cy put a string around a tube so that when you pull back it will release the lever. To create enough force to pull the lever, we thought about having the tube fall to the floor and release the cars. So, we thought that after the cups and sticks we can use dominos to fall forward and make the tube fall to the floor to release the cars (see picture).
We tried it but it did not work. We tried putting a car on top of the sticks to hit the dominos but it also didn’t work. (see pictures).
We decided that each of us should try to come up with a solution on our own.
I looked at a video called “The Lemonade Machine.” The video had a similar sequence to our cups and sticks (they had sticks and spoons). In the video, that sequence was followed by having the last spoon fall and releasing a ball into a ramp that was placed at a higher level. I tried to recreate something similar. I wanted to release a car to go down the Hot Wheel track. I first tried having a stick tied to a domino that held the car at the same level but it did not work (see video).
Then, I tried having the car at a different level and having a stick pull down the domino that was holding the car. But again, it did not work because the stick holding the domino did not have enough force to bring the domino down and release the car. Then, I realized I need more force so I tied a domino to the stick so when it fell it had enough force to bring down the domino. It worked as shown in the video (see video).