When doing this project there are some likes and dislikes. Some things that I like about this project is we get to be creative and use our imagination to build our own Rube Goldberg simple machine with our group. Also, we get to find different materials and use them in different ways which I thought was cool opportunity.

Some things I disliked about this project is it can be challenging to create a Rube Goldberg simple machine but at the end you are proud of yourself. Another thing that I disliked about this project is there are many fun and creative ideas that you can put into this project but your group has to agree with you and sometimes it doesn’t work out the way you wanted it to.

Some things that I LOVE about this project is everybody gets to share their ideas and their thinking. What I like about sharing our ideas is that when we hear other ideas we can learn from them and create even more ideas!

Throughout this project we faced many problems. We always had a solution that turned the problem into something new or fixed the problem. We had a lot of the same problems which were disagreements. We had a lot of them. One disagreement we had was we couldn’t decide if we should keep the elevations on the cardboard because we didn’t know if it would work and we didn’t know if it would add a cool feature. We were arguing a little about that.

Another problem we faced was whenever we tried the whole simple machine and we set it up again, we always would hit another domino and then all of the dominos would fall down which made us set up the whole machine again. The lesson is to BE CAREFUL! Here is a suggestion: two people setting up the machine is not a good idea because when two people set it up, it gets too confusing and someone can hit the other person and the whole thing falls down.

The last problem we faced was some of the steps we did didn’t work when we tried it. One example is when we attached string to the ladder and string to the ball, the ball fell out of the string so we needed to find a way to keep the string tied to the ball so when we swing the ball it won’t fall out of string. When we tied the string around the ball many times it still fell out. We had one choice which was to wrap the string around the ball SO MANY TIMES! It worked!

For the Rube Goldberg project each group had to think about a goal they want to achieve at the end of their simple machine. These are the steps my group and I did to come up with a goal:

#1: My group and I brainstormed some ideas for what our goal is going to be. We realized we needed to actually share our ideas and talk about it together as a group to see what we were thinking.

#2: Leila got the paper and we all wrote down our ideas on the paper. We ended up having about 10-12 ideas for goals.

#3: We wrote tally marks to the ones we liked the best. Two of the ideas got three tally marks because we liked the idea the best. It came down to one out of the two ideas. We decided that our goal is for something to play the radio and we will decide on a song to play.

For this project we had to write a list of materials or things that we used to build the Rube Goldberg simple machine. My group and I used many materials and things to build this simple machine. The most common thing we used was dominos. Some of the other things we used were balls, a train track/train, cups, cardboard, a car and popsicle sticks. One problem that we faced was that some of the materials we used didn’t actually work. One example is when we put the cardboard on the ground a little slanted and put train tracks on it with a train on the train tracks, the train wasn’t working and was trying to get over the little hill but couldn’t make it. After that we had to think about what we would do about that. To replace that we came up with a using different materials. We used a skinny tube and a marble. The marble rolls down the tube and hits the train which makes that move down the tracks. We always had a solution to the problems that we faced.

For the Rube Goldberg project you always have to have a plan. My group and I have so many Ideas! For this project you have to plan many things: who’s house are you doing the project at?, do you have the same schedule as the other people in your group?, what materials might we want to use?, what is the coarse going to be like?, who is going to film the videos?, who is going to talk in the videos? and who is going to start the coarse?.

What’s really helpful is writing it down and planning on paper so you have it when you need it. You can also change things and add things like my group did.

So far My group and I planned out our schedules, what the coarse is going to be like, who’s house we are doing it at and who’s starting off the coarse. My group and I are switching for everything. One time I talk and then I start it off etc.

I think our planning is very organized and we will do great during this project!