Rube Goldberg Final Reflection

This is my final reflection for my Rube Goldberg project.  Overall, my experience was that making my machine was really fun and challenging.  The parts i liked best were: the sketch because I got to put my ideas on paper and think them through clearly.  I liked building my machine because it was cool watching it all come together.  Making the movie was fun too beause I like using technology for projects.  Using visual and sound effects made the presentation more interesting to watch and fun to make.

I found similarities between creating my presentation and building my machine. Continue reading

Rube Goldberg Making The Video

Making the video was harder than it looked.  There were a lot of steps.  First, I had to get the photos and video clips off my phone and on to a computer.  It was tricky because they were large files – it took a long time.  Then I had to select the ones I was going to use in the final video and put them in the right order. I also wanted there to be a title slide and music to go with my video – that took more time too.  I ended using music that is available on iMovie.

One of the hardest parts was croping videos to make sure it looked and sounded good.  Adding the music was also hard.  Beacuse the timing had to be “on the dot”.  It took a bunch of tries to get it until I was happy with it.  In my video I used a combination of still photo, time lapse video and normal speed video to help make it interesting.

The video is 2 minutes and 36 seconds long. It shows me building the machine, couple of the my fails (NOT ALL) and then a successful run. In the end, I am happy with the final product because it met my expectations.

Rube Goldberg Testing the Machine

Testing was hard work, because I had to do so many repetitions to try to figure out what went wrong each time and try to figure out how to fix it until I got it right.  My machine has 9 steps and all of them had to tested before they could be put in the final design.  Some of the steps I wanted did not pass the test.

For example I wanted to include a swinging hammer but it wasn’t practical and I realized that it wouldn’t work.  I replaced the hammer with plastic baseball bat strapped to a stool. The bat wasn’t right the first time either, I had to figure out how to connect it to the ramp so that it would hit the rocket.  The bat had to tested different in ways to get it to hit the rocket in the right place.  One way was to put a bucket of dominoes behind it, then I got the stool and added the bungee cords.

The dominoes were hard to test with.  Every time I tested the machine and it didn’t work I would have to put them back up and sometimes they would fall before I was done putting them back up. This happened multiple times and I got REALLY aggravated.  And the worst time was when I bumped the table and they all fell down and triggered the rest of the machine and I had to set it back up again.  The good thing is that I learned what parts of the machine worked well or not.  One of things I learned by messing up the dominoes was how to make the truck work with enough power.

Another thing I learned from testing the machine was that the cup tower had to be smaller than I planned so that the football would hit the soccer ball in the right spot.  I did this by removing the top cup from the tower.  Another revision I made to this was moving the cup tower closer or father from the rocket to get it into the right spot.  I needed to get the cup tower in the right spot so that rocket would it correctly so the football would hit the soccer ball into the goal.

Over a few days, I estimate that I spent between 12-15 hours testing my machine.

 

 

Reflecting on Working Alone

Working alone has been a challenge but also beneficial in different ways.

Lets start with the challenges. First off, my machine takes a long time to set up. Every time I tested it, I had to pick up everything and adjust my design to fit the way that I thought it would work and than test it again. Another challenge is that I had to supply all the materials I couldn’t just ask a partner if they had a material that we could use because I don’t belong to a group.

Now lets continue with the benefits: first I can try my own ideas freely. I can test the steps and decide to put them in the project or not. The next benefit is that I can organize myself better, for example I don’t have to decide on a house to go to, so we can work on the machine, or decide who does what in setting up or the recording. Another benefit is time management. I was able to work on my project over vacation without coordinating with anybody else and I can complete some of the work while I don’t have any other homework assignments to focus on. The last benefit is being able to work at my own pace.

It is fun working alone I’m having a good experience so far working alone. Today I talked about the challenges and the benefits of working alone.

 

Rube Goldberg How I Think Building is Going to Go

So first off, I think that it will be hard because well I’m working alone so I will have to do all the work and setting up and measuring etc, also building will take longer because it is only me setting this whole thing up. Second I think that it will be easier in some ways like I wont have to decide who will do what and this person wanted to do that etc. Also if someone got sick then what would what we do but lucky for me I don’t have to decide that because I don’t have a partner/s. But if it doesn’t work the  first time (which I don’t think it will work on the first time) I will have to set it up all over again. Well now you know the ups and downs of building alone that I think will happen while I’m working on building the machine in the future. I think that I would work in a group on the future because then I will have worked alone and with a partner so I can compare.

 

Rube Goldberg Designing the Machine

So I thought originally to ring a bell as the thing I wanted to accomplish for my Rube Goldberg, but then I thought wait could I do something more practical. This was a challenge because there was not a wide variety of things to choose from what I was thinking of so I came up with the idea of getting a ball into a bin. My bins are going to be rectangular baskets and best of all I can use most of the same steps that I was going to use for my first idea and it also has the same amount of steps which is good because the minimum is 8 steps but I have more, that is good so I don’t have to think of a whole different plan. The process required a lot of research, I spent a couple hours after school one day. So basically I had to make some changes to the original and some challenges occurred and the process was hard. Research took a long time because well I had to find the information I wanted. That took a while because I had to find the videos/websites that had the good information and there were a lot of places that I could look. You learned what steps that I knew were possibilities and steps that I didn’t think that I would use.

Rube Goldberg decision making

Oh man we had a lot of decisions being made during our Rube Goldberg  project so far.  For  example I had to decide what my goal was going to be I chose to ring a bell. Then I had to decide my steps which was hard because I needed at least 8 steps but I got through now we have to decide what order they would be in but I got past. I got the idea from just thinking and thinking and research. I choose a lot of steps that did not work and in fact I decided to change my goal to getting a ball into a goal. I choose the steps I choose because I wanted the machine to be complex so I got a higher grade.

Feature Article Podcast Reflection

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hTxIcMumcFB0fGDKAskekHLLAvGMOAO1/view   This a link to my podcast

 

The process for making my podcast was really hard and we had to first decide what topic we were going to talk about. Then we had to write our script and rehearse a lot so we could get it right when we recorded.  After that we recorded and that’s when our practice cane in handy. it was hard to get a sound box and a microphone because there were 20 of us and only 4 microphones so we had to record and the give the tech to other people. last but not least we had to edit and fix our recording. There some challenges during this period of time one was getting a good recording, another one is that we had to add music, and finding the right  music that we liked and also getting our script long enough we had to make sure our script was at least 2 mins long. In conclusion there were multiple steps that we had to finish and challenges along the way but we’re excited to make more podcasts!

Ed Camp reflection Part 2

Today 21/6/18 we saw another series of ed camp talks and the first one I  saw  was Josh Lamberg. He talked about his experience playing baseball. He also talked about how you can set different goals for yourself and how it can effect you in a good way. He said to make a game out of what your doing and then set rules for yourself and how it can help you if for example if you’re playing baseball and you need to shovel the driveway how can you get it done and maybe get your hands stronger because having strong strong hands can make you a better baseball player. The second person I saw was Adam Etra and he talked about real estate investments and how you can make good investment and how you can be logical with them. we used pretend hotels as examples and we named characteristics of each and we guessed which one made the most money and decided which one we would invest in. I had a lot of fun and learned a lot.