Have you ever been in one of those restaurants that gives the kids mazes on paper and not been able to do the maze then suddenly an old man walks up to you. The old man is wearing rags, a cap and, a tattered hat to hide the fact that he’s bald. His pockets are filled with wallets that probably don’t belong to him. His voice is frail and scratchy, he says in a thick tone as he slips a new wallet into his pocket “start from the end its the best way to go” then half an hour later your dad goes up to the front to pay and starts asking “where did my wallet go?” well thats happened to me ;). The old man in my story was right. Starting from the end is the best way to go. I realized this as I did my Rube Goldberg machine. Starting from the end is easier because you know were the end is and from there you get a sense of the rest.

The first time I built my Rube Goldberg project, I started from the beginning.  I found that very problematic because I didn’t know what I wanted to do in the final step.  Was I going to have a water bottle go into the glass, or was I going to do something else entirely?  I wound up starting over, and I started from the end and worked backwards.  This helped me because tipping over a water bottle was one of the hardest parts of the Rube Goldberg project, and starting from that step allowed me to focus and gave me time to get that right.