When I was told that my class would be building Rube Goldberg machines, I was excited, confused, and surprised at the same time. I had no clue how to build a Rube Goldberg machine, further more, I barely even knew what it was! I mean, I had a basic idea, but that wasn’t enough. So when my teacher said that we had the choice to work alone, in partnerships, or in groups, I decided to work in a partnership. Working in a partnership for me, is much easier then working alone, or in a group. I think why I like to work in partnerships, is because there are not too many people gathering and discussing, nor am I the only one. So I decided to do this project with my friend, Meera.
As Meera and I got further into the project, we had to make a lot more decisions. First, we had to decide what our plan was for the machine. For example, Meera and I discussed what the simple task would be, then we thought about the last few steps that would lead to completing the simple task, and finally, we went through all of the steps of the machine. In our case, Meera and I decided that the simple task would be to lift a post-it, from a post-it pack. Then, we figured maybe if we use something to hit a heavy object, then the heavy object could fall onto something like a seesaw, then the other side of the seesaw will rise, and the other side of the seesaw could maybe be attached to a string which is also connected to a post-it, so the when the other side of the seesaw rose, it would carry the string and the post-it with it. That way, the post-it would be lifted from the post-it pack and our simple task would be complete!
After figuring out the last few steps, Meera and I had to decide what we wanted our whole machine to look like. So we went through what we wanted our whole process to eventually look like. Throughout the whole process of our Rube Goldberg project so far, I had to make many decisions, and I’m pretty sure that I will probably be making more decisions soon. But it won’t be too difficult, after all, decision making is very important!