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Tweaking Our Rube Goldberg

The last time our Rube Goldberg group met we wanted to make sure our course worked. We did it over and over until we were satisfied. We made adjustments to the car and the dominoes after the marble track. Now we know that our Rube Goldberg works. We also added a few ideas. For example, we put a domino on it’s side so the marble will bounce off it and hit dominoes. Also, we changed the car so that it will hit the marble every time. This idea took a lot of tape, but it worked.

Building Rube Goldberg

After we finished our sketch we started building our Rube Goldberg. We had even more problems. Some of them were big and some of them were small. One of our big problems was, why wasn’t the dominoe knocking over the Jenga block. This was harder to solve then our small problem. Our small problem was why was the marble hitting the dominoe so hard? Was it because the marble was to heavy or was the angle of the tube to steep.

Rube Goldberg Part 2

The first time Jonny, Ian, and I met for Rube Goldberg we had a big problem! How are you supposed to combine our house hold  items into a Rube Goldberg? We started by making a sketch. Dominoes into Jenga clocks into more dominoes into Rubikub into a marble track. We used google drawings to make our sketch. After we made our sketch, Jonny and I searched the house for any more objects that would be useful.  We found none but started to assemble our Rube Goldberg.

Starting Rube Goldeberg

When Jonny, Ian, and I were starting Rube Goldberg, we had to think about two main things. First, what do we want our Rube Goldberg to do? Should it score a goal or turn something on, etc? We compromised on score a goal. Second, what materials should we use? Should we use a ping pong table or the couch? We compromised on the ping pong table. To get started we watched videos of Rube Goldberg in class, but I also watched other videos at home. One of the videos was called An Epic Domestic Contraption. Click here to watch.

Westward Expansion Unit

The Westward Expansion unit was fun because I had only learned about the Louisiana Purchase and I had never knew that it triggered a whole chain of events. I enjoyed watching video’s about it because it was so interesting. The Louisiana Purchase, Gold Rush, Erie Canal, Luis and Clark, Telegraph,  and the Transcontinental Railroad were fun to learn about.

Debates

    After our first debate I thought we could have done better by practicing the way we were going to do it in front of the whole class. We also could have done better by knowing who was going to say what because sometimes someone said the opposing sides reason. We practiced really hard so our second debate could be better than our first.
    I thought our group did much better in our second debate because everyone did their part and nobody messed up. We had better reasons and evidence too. Another reason why we did better is because everyone practiced much harder because we knew our group could’ve done better. The only thing I thought we could’ve done better is work on our sum ups.
Here is our second debate…

NASA Chat

I think it was awesome that we got to see behind the scenes of NASA building there rockets. It was even cooler that the person talking to us worked for NASA. NASA is planning to launch a rocket to Mars when we are close as possible. NASA also launched a robot named Juneau to Jupiter hoping to get information on the planet.Overall, it was awesome getting connected to NASA.