Category Archives: 5th Grade
Rube Goldberg Blog Post #5
My rube gold berg finally worked! I’m so happy. I’ll admit, when I starting getting to 50-60 tries, I got really frustrated and started cursing, and I only curse when I get really really frustrated. Also, I didn’t really enjoy this project because it caused fights between my family. For example, when my rube gold berg was constantly not working, my dad kept telling me to make every step of my rube gold berg to work every time. I disagreed with him so that got us up into a fight. I also think that my determination to finish my rube gold berg went to far. Once, I stayed up all the way to 12:00 working on my rube gold berg and got up the next day at 7 to work on my rube gold berg but it still didn’t work.In all, it took 82 attempts for my rube gold berg to work. The part that I think helped me succeed was changing the ramp. The ramp was the main spot where my rube gold berg would not work. Another spot was connected to the ramp which is the part where the ball on the ramp hits another ball on another ramp. That was hard because I couldn’t find a way to make the ball turn a sharp corner and then hit the other ball.
Rube Goldberg Blog Post #4
So far, I’ve been struggling with getting past the first few steps. My first thought was that my rube goldberg would not work in the ending part but what actually happened was my begging was not working.
I’ve made a lot of major changes to my sketch. I’ve especially done this in my ramp, due to the fact that it just won’t stand. I had to use lots and lots of materials to successfully keep up the ramp. One thing that has been very annoying is that my pet rabbit is constantly trying to get out of his box which makes a ton of noise. This is really annoying when I’m trying to record.
In the beginning I started noticing many different parts where I doubted it would work. One major part was trying to connect my ramp to the part where the ball falls of the stairs. I connected this by sing a plastic pipe to have the ball roll into it and then when the ball gets through, it will roll onto the ramp.
I learned from my first 7 attempts that it was always the first 2 steps that didn’t or barely worked. After these fals, I decided to make sure that my first steps were automatically done. Or just it was 100% going to work.
My prediction is that it will take 20 attempts to make it work.
Rube Goldberg Blog Post #3
When I started building, I found out that some parts are going to need to be changed. For example, when I was tying my string to my baseball which was tied to my hot wheels set, I realized I needed something to to make my hot wheels set heavier so when my ball fell of the chair, my hot wheels set wouldn’t flip over and fall on the floor. Also, I needed to find a way so that my cardboard half pipe could stay in the air. I think filming my rube goldberg is going to be really hard because at one point in my rube goldberg, my marble makes a sharp left turn off my stairs. I think this will be really hard to film. Right now, I have no concerns of what’s not going to work but I bet I will find some later in the process.
Rube Goldberg Blog Post #2
For my sketch, I worked backwards from when the ball is pushed into the bin. I remembered I had a hot wheels
ramp play set I got a long time ago. I decide to use that to push the ball into the bin. Next, I got a little complicated. I tried to find a way to pull a trigger on my hotwheels set to make the car go. So I decided to use a ball to make the trigger move. That wasn’t so easy to do because I would have to calculate how much force I have to use to make the trigger move. After I calculated everything, I decided to place that ball on a chair and have another ball hit that ball. That ball would come from a cardboard ramp made of 2 long cardboard roles and the ball would roll in the middle. Then I decide to make a wooden half pipe to make the ball roll on there which would make the ball on the cardboard roles move. Before that, I decided to have a marble game named,”Gravity Maze” which would trigger the ball on the half pipe to move along. Before that I had dominoes and at the start, I had a homade marble maze.
Rube Goldberg Blog Post #1
When I started my project, my first thought was ,”what do I want my rube goldberg to do?” That might sound like a simple question but I was sort of struggling with this question. My first thought was to have the rube goldberg press some kind of button to cause whatever the button is connected to will turn on. But then when I started experimenting, I found out I had no button that could be successfully triggered. So I started brainstorming for more ideas of what to make my rube goldberg do. My second thought for my rube goldberg was chores. I thought of a bunch of chores and one that stood out to me the most was putting a ball in a basket. This sounded very simple for me to do because all I had to do was make something hit a ball and then that ball falls into a basket. So that is what I decided on.
Rocketry Reflection
During the whole rocket process, my favorite moment was the last launch. Despite all the competitiveness, our group was really excited to see how our final launch would turn out because we had improved a lot through the experience so we were really excited to see our final results. I think the most challenging thing for us was splitting the work equally. Sometimes, some people did a little work and some did a lot. I think our group really showed the reason for doing this units, learning from your errors. For example our groups results went from around 36 feet, to 84 feet, to 113 feet. Each rocket successful impacted the next rocket positively. I learned about myself that sometimes I can be foolish but sometimes I can be really serious and hard-working. I learned that working in a group, if one person has a lack of concentration, it could affect the whole group. I learned through building, designing and launching that the lighter the rocket, the better. I also learned that sometimes, you should stick to research, not your own knowledge. For example, our entire group thought that a pointy nose cone would be the most aerodynamic, but after some research, I concluded that a round nose cone was the best. Still we couldn’t use the idea because no one agreed with me. Overall, I think the biggest moral we learned is that in a team, you must work together or you team will fall apart. I can connect this to a fable I read by Aesop. He wrote,”United we stand, divided we fall”.
Watch Out!
Watch Out!
By: Raymond
It was a windy day, 12:00 at Heathcote Elementary School. 5th graders were outside playing soccer when suddenly “BANG!” Everyone turned to see what could make this big of a noise. Apparently, the wind had knocked the goal down. Lilly Tessler of class 5C was playing goalie at the time when the goal fell down. If she would’ve been any closer forward, the crossbar of the goal would’ve slammed on her head. “I hope no one got hurt” says Josh Potters of class 5C. “I was scared because I didn’t want Lilly to get hurt” says Naomi Fisher also of class 5C. We are still not sure what caused this tremendous amount of strong and powerful wind.
Spinner Disaster
Spinner Disaster
By: Raymond
It was 10:30, it was the morning of September 14. Kid rushed to the playground only to find out that the playground spinner was closed off. The Spinner was a very enjoyed piece of playground equipment in the school. But when some kids found out the Spinner was closed, it was a big deal. The Spinner was closed due to to many kids getting hurt on it. “I was relieved when they blocked it off to work on it and make it slower because it was very dangerous when it was so fast.” Says Ms. Furgatch. “I honestly didn’t care about it, but I knew that a lot of other kids would be upset.” Says Gabi Smajlaj. After they finish making it slower, kids will be allowed to go back on it. But with a few more rules. One of these rules is a maximum of 8 people on the spinner. Other kids who aren’t the first 8 will have to make a line to go on the spinner. After a while, kids started finding other thing to do at recess. Such as play a sport, or play on the playground. If students are still paranoid about this “disaster” is unknown.