On Friday, March 1st, my partner and I tested our Rube Goldberg again. We tested it a few times, and the ending still didn’t work. What we did to fix the ending was we put tape on the sides of the box, because earlier we cut out a hole for the chips to fall out of. We didn’t want the chips to stick to the tape, so we stuck cotton balls on the tape. Then, we tested our Rube Goldberg again, and it finally worked! This project challenged my partner and I to stretch our thinking a lot more than we usually do.

On Thursday, February 28, my partner and I finished building our whole Rube Goldberg. Everything worked, except the last step. Our last step is the car knocking down the chip bag into the bowl. We tested our Rube Goldberg a few times. Everytime we tested our Rube Goldberg, the last step was always the step that didn’t work. Sometimes, the bag of chips knocked over and didn’t go into the bowl. Sometimes, when the bag of chips knocked over there were only 1-3 chips in the bowl. We are still testing and fixing the last step, but I think that our Rube Goldberg improved so much.

On Tuesday, February 26, my partner and I started building our Rube Goldberg. Our simple machines are the inclined plane, the lever, and the wheel and axle. We started with our beginning, which is a lot of paper towel rolls and toilet paper rolls taped together, to make the marble roll down the stairs. My partner and I decided to put a chair in the back of the tube, so the tube would be higher, and the marble will have more power. We tried to tape the tube onto the chair but it wouldn’t stick. Then, we tried to tie the tube to the chair, and it worked. Then, we started building the rest. The ball was supposed to knock down a tall box. We dropped the ball in the tube and the ball went into a different direction. We tried again, but the ball still went in a different direction, and not straight into the box. We haven’t found a way to fix this yet, but we are really excited to see the whole Rube Goldberg built.

After my partner and I finished the sketch, we realized that we only had one simple machine, which was the inclined plane. We had to start with a brand new piece of paper and started the sketch again. First, we thought of making a pulley. We thought of making it with a tape roll and string. We realized that there would be nowhere to hang the pulley, so we thought of a different simple machine. While it was Winter Break, I thought of trying to make a lever and a wheel and axle. After Winter Break, we tried looking for materials to make the lever and the wheel and axle. For our wheel and axle, we used a toy car, and for our lever, we used a tinfoil roll and a plastic lid.

On February 5, my partner and I started working on our Rube Goldberg. My partner and I started sketching and wrote down the materials that we needed. Our goal is to put chips in a bowl. The materials we need is a chair, books, paper towel rolls, toilet paper rolls, binders, marbles, small box, bowl, chips, and tape/glue. My partner and I decided to use stairs as a platform for our Rube Goldberg instead of a flat surface because the marble might stop. My partner and I are very excited to start building.