A couple of weeks ago my teacher assigned us the Rube Goldberg assignment and at first, I thought oh no how am I going to do this but now that I have started the project I think that I can do it and will have a great machine at the end. In case you are wondering, a Rube Goldberg machine is a machine that completes a simple task in a very complex way. For example, a simple task is to fill a cup up with water but a Rube Goldberg would fill up a cup of water but to do that the machine would complete other complex steps first.

When we started this project I had no clue what to do so when I found out I could watch past 5th-grade students’ videos I thought I can do this now. So for me watching past 5th-grade students’ Rube Goldberg videos was very helpful. Also, my family has been very helpful and has been willing to help me with anything I needed such as finding materials, building, and filming videos even so with my parents’ help I did a lot of work by myself with that being said we didn’t just work we had fun.

First I had to come up with a simple task. I chose to get my dog a treat out of a cup. Then I had to figure out how I was going to do that and once I did I ran to get a pencil and a few pieces of paper to sketch out my design. In the sketch, I needed to draw my steps label them one-ten, and describe what was happening in detail to have a good sketch. What I decided to do to figure out all my steps were by working backward by figuring out the last step, the second to last step, the third to last step, and so on. 

To find your steps (at least eight) you have to know what counts as a step. For the Heathcote 5th grade students for us, we needed 8 DIFFERENT steps. Here is what counted as a step: any kind of energy transfer. For example, a step would be having a marble going down a marble run and then hitting dominos, hitting the dominos would be your second step. Also, another requirement for this project was at least three simple machines, (a simple machine is a machine that makes work easier for you.) the three simple machines I used were an inclined plane, a  wheel, and a pulley and you can repeat simple machines but at least three different ones. 

For me, the most fun part of the process for me was building the final project. I was following my sketch idea but I realized it wouldn’t work so then I had to revise it and figure out what was wrong with it and then figure out how to fix it and once I knew what to do I got straight to recording.

Overall my process has been fun and a little bit stressful. I am super excited to see how the final project turns out even if I’m not as close as I think I am to finishing.