With all of the takes Audrey, Samantha and I did we spent a LOT of time setting things up again. We sang, danced and took selfies while listening to music and setting up dominos and books. (We got a bit off track sometimes:) While we had a lot of fun we also talked (and argued a bit) about our project. We did a lot of our planning as we set things up too. Samantha, Audrey and I had a blast with this project!!!

 

 

 

For our Rube Goldberg project we have to film all of our takes until we get a success. It took Samantha, Audrey and me 101 takes until we got our success. Each take took a long time to set back up so we had to reconsider our steps a bit. We switched dominos with Jenga pieces and we made our book dominos shorter. This made it so we had less things to set up.

Along with taking things away we marked where things were supposed to go. We used green painters’ tape to mark where the string dominos sat. This way we wouldn’t have to test everything as much before we did our next take. It was extremely helpful and made everything so much faster!!

Before we did any takes we always tested the positions of everything. This way we wouldn’t get far into our Rube Goldberg and have it not work because a domino, book or marble was misplaced. Our testing involved trying a small part of our Rube Goldberg to make sure they worked and stopping them before they knocked down the next step. We found that this was very helpful because it made us much more consistent.

 

In our project there was one thing that stood out to Audrey, Samantha and me, just not in a good way… It was dominos. We regret putting dominos in our project because they were IMPOSSIBLE to set up. You would be almost done and then “whoops” all the dominos would fall again. We decided we would have to ditch the dominos.

To replace the dominos we used Jenga blocks. They were taller so you could place them farther apart, they were more balanced and they were SO much easier to set up. Samantha, Audrey and I were very happy with our decision. It taught us about problem solving and improved our project.

    

This past week we started a Rube Goldberg project. This project is a highlight of fifth grade! Almost everybody looks forward to it! Our teacher, Ms. Boyer, let us pick our parters. I chose my friends Audrey and Samantha. We all agreed to do the project at my house. The point of the project is to make a machine with many steps to accomplish a simple task.

On Monday Audrey and Samantha both came over to my house. We went upstairs right away and started brainstorming. We quickly came up with the first half of our Rube Goldberg. We made a ramp out of an ironing board. The toilet paper would roll down the ramp to hit the ball. The thing is, the toilet paper would always roll off the ramp! We added poles to the side of our ramp so that the toilet paper went down the ramp without rolling off. For the next hour Audrey and Samantha stayed, and we adjusted and tweaked our project. We adjusted the angles on our dominoes and cars. We all worked well together making sure to be flexible and kind. On that first day we got a lot done because we all got along perfectly.

The next day didn’t go as well. For the first hour we were fine. We made a pendulum and tweaked the project a bit more, but then we had a disagreement. Samantha and I wanted to use a train that Audrey didn’t want to use. After a while we decided that everybody had to agree on all the steps of our project. From then on everything went much more smoothly. Our Rube Goldberg  project may not be done, but everybody in our group likes each and every step.

Today Samantha and Audrey came over to my house to work on our Rube Goldberg for our third meeting. We all came with some ideas which made our process go a lot faster. My ideas were adding a popsicle stick chain reaction and a motorized train. We showed each other our ideas and after we showed each other our ideas we began to build. We built fast because we had already planned our new steps. We tried each step and tweaked each one. We built four steps today which is more than we’ve ever done in a session.

We also picked our task. We came up with ten ideas and we narrowed them down to two. Some of are ideas were feed the cat, play music, close a door and turn off the lights. Our process for narrowing our ideas down was if one or more people didn’t like an idea then we got rid of it. From the last two ideas we picked our favorite. We decided for our task we would click a button that will play music. We all loved the idea and couldn’t wait to start to figure out how to make it work!!!

 

As you know we have been doing Rube Goldbergs for school. We are only about halfway done with ours. We have met a few times, but we were never really ready when we met. That is why Samantha, Audrey and I are trying to improve our preparation now. We are all going to come to our next meeting with a few new ideas. I have been watching videos and trying ideas out upstairs in my attic. I have tried out chain reactions wth popsicle sticks, dominos on strings and marble runs. We have also been talking at school about our project and ideas.

Along with talking at school about our project ideas, we have also started our drawing. Our plan is to do all the writing and drawing at school so that we only have to build our project when Samantha and Audrey come over. So far our plan has worked and we have gotten a lot more done. We are hoping that when they come over on Monday we will finish our first edition. I have definitely learned a lot from this project so far. I have learned about Rube Goldbergs, but I have also learned about working with a team, how to make compromises and how to manage time. This has been a great experience!!!!!