Max and I finished!!! Not that it was easy-peasy. No, it was really DIFFICULT. First, we had a deadline. 3:30 to 5:15. Many tries, came with an equal amount of FAILS. We totally changed EVERYTHING, for the third time. The part at home that I did was a complete BUST. It didn’t WORK OUT on Maxwell’s “workout” bench.(Get it?) To top it off, Maxwell’s mom forgot to tell the “cleaning ladies” to not DESTROY Maxwell’s part. So we spent most of the time trying to remember what we did. When my dad came, it was a CATASTROPHE. We had to re-setup so many times. When the time came, I left for about 45 minutes until Max’s drum lesson was over. Our next deadline was until my dad had to pick up my sister at 5:45. We fixed everything but guess what? More and more F-A-I-L-S. They just kept piling on! My dad had to leave and when he came back we would continue. I counted six more fails when something, AMAZING happened…Everything thing worked! Except for the last part! The next try we actually accomplished our goal! In our not-so-realistic fantasies. Okay, we did eventually get it right and everybody cheered and clapped. Except for one thing…Nah, I’m just playing with you.

It was really fun collaborating with my buddy Maxwell on this project. But we did go through some up-and-down moments. We realized, when you have a great partner by your side, you can accomplish anything.

I finished my half of the project! To start it off, I got my HotWheels track from the basement. Some features of the track are: The track goes in a loopdy-loop , it starts off by someone launching the car, and it ends on an inclined plane.  After the car goes off an inclined plane, it hits a ball that goes down a ramp made of wooden blocks. Around the ramp is a house for design so it doesn’t look like Max and I just put together a bunch of things in 30 minutes. After the ball goes down the ramp, it goes into a clear tube. The ball then starts Maxwell’s part.  We’re still trying to figure out the final, simple, task. On Monday, we will finish everything, clear up some things and video our A.R.G.M(Awesome Rube Goldberg Machine)

LATER IN THE DAY UPDATE

Huge stuff. I realized that my part of Max an my A.R.G.M wasn’t really a “chain reaction” and the percentage of it working was less than my age. So I tried using the idea of our original plan. The cart would go down the workout bench, but I changed it a little. For starters, I would press a button to launch a rubber pig that would hit a cart with a ball in it. The cart would have to come to an abrupt stop, forcing it to flip, letting the ball go through an open tunnel (two of the sides were blocked, you could see from above and North to South.) The ball would then go through a clear tube which would then lead to Maxwell’s side.  Also, I figured out the simple task and how to actually accomplish it. There would be a domino tower that would fall because of the impact of something else knocking into it which would land on a “dinger” to wake up Maxwell to finish his homework after dozing off momentarily.

I met up with Max at 4:30. We were planning to video our project today. He changed a lot of things since last time. But, we immediately ran into some problems. Our original simple task was slide a piece of paper under the door but we couldn’t find a way, then we wanted knock a globe off its axis, that did not work, finally we decided to have a domino fall on Max’s foot while he’s “sleeping” to wake him up after he got bored of his homework. Also, it was extremely hard to make it work. We had all these intricate things that have at most a 25% of working and even if it did work, it would be hard to film it. So we spent about an hour brainstorming again. My dad came just as we were about to try it out. He filmed it and it only got past step two. After ten videos, we couldn’t get past step 3. We tried different ways with my dad’s help but it still wouldn’t work. So we decided that Max’ll fix the second half of the project while I do the first half because our idea did not work.  To me, we basically took a step back in the process. Hopefully, we’ll get it done before the deadline, April 19.

I went to Max’s house at 5:45. I brought a mini cart, dominoes, sticks, special blocks, a golf tube, and tennis balls. We got right to work. I used my iPod to record and take pictures of our work.  We started off with an inclined plane for the cart to go down, which would hit the golf tube which hit a paper cup tower which would hit dominoes  in a line which would hit a card tower which would hit a domino which would start a marble going down a ramp hitting down dominoes one by one almost like curtains were opening which would curve then knock into a domino line which would hit a ball which would hit a bigger ball which would hit a book which would hit a bigger book and would turn on a switch to turn on a fan which would blow a message under the door saying “Come See Our Awesome Rube Goldberg Project”.

Italics/bold words mean that Max and I haven’t put that step together yet.

Here’s the link to our Rube Goldberg folder:

https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/0B1kJrBhG_rOIV09yS2pxY0NnWXc

Max and I decided what our plan should be. We drew a sketch of our plan which is supposed to be in Maxwell’s room. We’re going to use HexBug tracks, mini carts, Hot Wheels cars, Hot Wheels tracks, blocks, books, levers, a lot of dominoes, paper cups, string, etc. The final task will ultimately be turning off/on a light switch. We’re a little worried, though. I haven’t even been at his house yet! We didn’t really start yet. And two resources, a sketch/outline and three blog reflections are due Monday 4/4 the first day Max and I will meet! We will be cutting it close to finish is project before the deadline, but I think Max and I can do it.