Rube Goldberg #1 – Choosing Teams

Our teacher introduced us to a new project, making Rube Goldberg machines. Rube Goldberg machines are when something starts a complex chain reaction that does a simple everyday life task.

We started out by splitting ourselves up into groups, partners, or working alone that we wanted to build the Rube Goldberg machine with. My group including three classmates: Eli, Reece, and Chase.Next, we tried to make plans on when we were going to meet with each other. We decided to work with each other on Mondays and Fridays. After that we decided that the Rube Goldberg machine was going to be at my house because of all the building equipment that I have.

Our days that we were going to meet didn’t go as planned. One group member had to go to a sports event and other members had conflicts. Since we couldn’t meet I started working on the Rube Goldberg alone. I started by making a drawing of what I wanted my machine to look like, then I started building it. While I was building it I found that I couldn’t get to the top of the table from the ground. It took hours for me to figure out a solution. My solution was having a tennis ball make a wind-up car move which made another wind-up car move on top of the table. I was making progress. I was already on the 6th step before my group could even meet.

Then, on the Monday after the Rube Goldberg was assigned, my group came over to my house to work on the Rube Goldberg machine. The only problem was that my group didn’t want to work on the Rube Goldberg machine… they wanted to play on my Xbox and eat snacks!  After two hours of meeting, all we accomplished was one less step than I started with because one of my group members accidently knocked the pieces of a step down on his way out. I managed to fix it, but it took time.

I hope that in the future when my group meets we will be more productive.

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