Problems We Faced
During my first meetings with Eli, we faced many problems. We couldn’t find a way to use the wheel and we couldn’t find a way to stop the Thomas train from moving on to the track.
When I was looking for things I could use in my Rube Goldberg project after our first meeting, I found a wheel. I had seen it in a few videos and wondered how we could incorporate it into our project. The next time Eli came to my house I showed him the wheel and he also wanted to use it. In the videos some people had a wheel on a table and had something heavy fall off the table. Every time they had a string attached to the heavy object and the wheel, so that when the heavy object would fall off the table it would spin the wheel. They then had different steps after the spinning.
The problem was that we already figured out what we were going to do on the table so we had to think of how to use the wheel on the ground. I thought if a heavy ball would roll down the ramp and gain some speed with a string attached to it it could spin the wheel. We tried it and it was way too hard to have the ball stay on the ramp .The heavy ball didn’t work. We looked in our bags of equipment for something that would stay on the track. I saw a hot rod but it was to light. Finally, we saw a train just lying on the floor. It was perfect and it fit all of our needs! We tested it and it was a SUCCESS! When the wheel spins it pulls out a popsicle stick which starts a chain reaction.
The other problem we faced was that we needed to find a way to have the battery operated Thomas train on when we started the Rube Goldberg, but we needed to keep it from moving until we reached that step. Our first idea was the same as the Anki Overdrive, to have the train hanging off the end of the track and have a domino push it onto the track. The train was too strong so it plowed its way onto the track. Eli thought that we could have something blocking the train. I thought it sounded good, so we decided to try to find a way to use magna tiles to block the train. At first we couldn’t think of an idea so we decided to work on other things and come back to this problem. One night before I went to bed I thought of an idea. I thought we could have a big marble attached to a string fall from a table and could pull the magna tiles away. It worked! We were excited that we could work through these problems.
I like you you involved multiple perspectives into your post. You proposed a problem, and then elaborately explained the solution. Tying into your proposed solution and example, you involved a video which helped me understand what you were trying to emphasize in a whole new level. Also, your selection of weords just were perfect, as when you said incorporated in the first couple of sentences in your project. That word really set the tone for the rest of your blog post and made me really have a general idea what your blog post was about. This is an acceptionaly unique blog posts for the different aspects listed above. Great job!