Monthly Archives: February 2018

SpaceX Launch

5th grade, Science

The SpaceX just launched a rocket called Falcon Heavy, on Tuesday, February 7, 2018. It was really exciting because it was the first ever rocket to be previously used and cargo capsule on the same mission. That proved that rockets can be successfully reused. Also, the rocket was also able to land. That is not something that happens much. The launch will be reducing the price of launches. That will help space exploration because the rockets are almost at an affordable price. If rockets are more affordable there will be more going into space.

I feel that the the Falcon Heavy is incredible. It is the worlds most powerful rocket! Also SpaceX is always thinking of new ways to improve and make new and old rockets. That is important because rockets will be more helpful to scientists and maybe humans can even go in them. That would be a big improvement from where spaceX is now.

I’m still wondering how the creators of Falcon Heavy came up with these exact ideas. Did they have to make a lot of choices? Was it easy? Did they have something in mind they were thinking about doing? In the beginnig of the creating how long did they think it would take them? I’m also wondering how they thought of the idea to put a Tesla in the rocket?

Rube Goldberg #6 – Building Try #3/Making the video

5th grade, Rube Goldberg

Building try #3!!! We were almost done. All Jordan and I had to do were set the machine up and do it. But, we set it up and it took so many tries and it never worked so we decided to fully redo it.

Once our machine was fully rebuilt we tried it and it only had a few errors. They were easy to fix so all we had to do was video it a few times. That required lots of time and patience. This is how our new machine worked:

  1. a phone went down a ramp and hit books
  2. the books pushed cups that were stacked up with a lever on top
  3. the lever fell down and hit a car with a string on it
  4. the car fell on the floor which was connected to a stick
  5. the stick fell down from the cars power and released a marble
  6. the marble went down a small roller coaster
  7. the marble then hit dominoes
  8. the last domino had a string on it
  9. the last marble fell off of the table which pulled a cup also connected to the dominoes string
  10. the cup was also connected to that string so it fell off of the tale too
  11. the cup had another string on it that pulled CDs as dominoes
  12. the last CD hit a ball
  13. the ball rolled down a ramp and hit pins

That was our final success!

Blog Post #5 – Building Try #2

5th grade, Rube Goldberg

Me and Jordan started building the second half of our machine. We were so excited and we knew exactly what to expect. Again, it was not that easy to just copy our sketch. In the beginning of our second building time building we took some time making sure everything we did last time worked. Once we put everything in the right spot we started adding steps after steps until we were done. In between we tried it once in a while.

Our next step after finishing the first half was making a ramp from the table to the ottoman. That took a little while to figure out. Once we decided what we were doing we decided to stack books and put a rummy-Q board turned around. A ball would roll down that to then hit books stood up as dominoes. It took a few minutes for us to be able to stand the books up but we did. Those books hit a ball that would fall down the ramp and hit pins.

We were really happy with how far we got that day!

Blog post #4 – Building Try #1

5th grade, Rube Goldberg, Science

Jordan and I started building our machine! I was really excited in the beginning to then realize it wasn’t as easy as it seemed. I thought that all we had to do was copy the sketch. That was true, but we also had to make sure everything was standing and in the right spot. We also had to find the materials we were using.

Our first thing was making the ramp. It didn’t take too long and it was pretty simple. Then we had to put books out like dominoes. The books had to be high so we put books flat below them. Keeping the books still and not shaking the table while standing up the other books was very hard. They kept falling! Once that was finished that part, we tried it. It started out by “Rube Goldberg” calling us. Then we set it up again and added one more step. We added a ramp. It took us a little while to decide on what we were going to do for the ramp then we found a little car track that would go down a stack of books. A marble would then go down that ramp and hit dominoes. This was the hardest part. Getting the dominoes to stand! Once we built that we kept doing it over and over.

During our whole learning process we learned it took a lot of patience. We had only done 4 steps so far. ( half of the whole thing) and we already tried it so many times. The good thing is that some steps taught us what other steps would be like.