When we got our success video I was so excited, but I wasn’t there when it happened. It took 16 attempts to get a final success. I was so happy and so relived when it worked because it wasn’t the most sophisticated machine and it wasn’t the most accurate. I was very relived because I wasn’t sure if it was going to work because sizing and weight were crucial.
I learned how to work in a group and cooperate with group members because in a group you have to be able to listen and share ideas. I also learned how to solve problems. When steps in our machine didn’t work we had to use materials around us improvise and use what we know to fix it.
I am very happy that we have a success video. We were hoping for more than the 10 steps that we had, but we had limited space as the machine was touching the floor on its last step.
When we were testing our machine, I wasn’t feeling confident that it was going to work. Some of the the parts that failed included keeping the tunnel in place as it kept falling so we added stronger tape to keep it in place; the marble kept going off the side of its path as there was an indent in the chair that we rested it on, so we had to get a heavier and bigger marble to knock the dominos down.
We learned that you need to have the right amount of weight to keep things going. We also learned we need to have lots of force for a chain reaction to work. At the end of the machine we had to make the tunnel higher so it would go into the cage because the cage is elevated.
I think we did a really good job with the Rube Goldberg project. One part that worked great is when a marble bounced off the drum and onto the blocks. I thought this part wouldn’t work because I thought it wouldn’t bounce and that the marble was too heavy and would break the flimsy little drum. It turned out the drum was pretty strong and the marble easily bounced onto the blocks. Setting up the machine again wasn’t hard because it was only dominos, everything else was taped or stuck in place.
I am very excited that our Rube Goldberg machine was successful! We might add more steps to improve our grade. What we had in our sketch is completely different then what we have actually built.
This is part of our rube Goldberg:
When we started building the machine, it worked. But when we added more steps, it became more complicated. We purposely started high off the ground so gravity can do it’s job. But towards the end our machine is close to the ground so space is limited to add new steps. We had to shave the carrot into a ball so that it rolls into a small cup that goes into the Guinea Pig’s cage. Today I went to Emily’s house to work on the machine and take multiple videos.
My favorite Rube Goldberg video is:
We learned that you need lots of momentum for our machine to actually work. I didn’t think we would get a success video in time but we managed to get it!
We started building our project and we got up to step six we tested it out and it worked but now we have to continue with machine. Setting up the dominos was very frustrating and as well as getting the right sized marble for our machine so that is can slide through our tunnels. At the start, our machine was very easy because it was just ramps and a roller coaster. Our machine is a little different compared to our plan. We also need to come up with different ideas for steps as we repeated many steps. We have tunnels, ramps, and dominos. I learned that you need a lot of momentum to keep the marble rolling. We are going to have to bend the path of the machine around the room. Our machine has multiple marbles to keep it going. We had to make a domino hold a marble so when it gets knocked over the marble will continue on the track.
We made our plan and now we have to build the contraption and hope it will work. It will probably take at least 20 attempts to finally get the carrot into the hole. For our plan, we are going to use tunnels, ramps, cardboard, and marbles etc. We had an easy time gathering materials because all of us have lots of ramps, springs, tunnels, cardboard etc. Emily has a marble roller coaster and we are going to use that to start our Rube Goldberg. We have ten steps on our plan paper but as soon as we get it going we will add more steps. We are going to have to skin the carrot a little bit to get it to fit trough the cage bars. Our Rube Goldberg will have Jenga pieces knock over a ball into the next step, but we are not close to being finished.
We recently started our Rube Goldberg Project which involves building simple machines that do very easy tasks like opening a book or turning on a light switch. You can choose to work alone or work in a group, with maximum 4 members in a group. My group is Emily, Naomi, and Carlie. The simple task we chose was sliding a carrot down a ramp and into Emily’s guinea pig cage. We came up with that idea while we were playing with Emily’s pets. Our teacher required us to have to have at least 8 steps. We have 6 right now but we are planing to have 15 steps. We are also supposed to take a video and share the accomplishment with our class. We also have to blog about the process along the way.
