The second coding project I made was on Scratch. It is a game where you need to dodge the balls flying at you. You control yourself with the mouse. If a ball touches you, you lose! Try to stay alive as long as you can. One ball moves side to side. Another one follows you. The last one moves randomly. The score goes up every second you stay alive. I got the idea based on another Scratch game. Good Luck!

We were assigned to make four coding projects on either Scratch or Tynker. I made this game on Scratch. I like Scratch because it easy to access the coding blocks. This is a battleship multiplayer game! First, find a friend to play with. The way to play is one player uses the arrow keys to move up and down. The player presses space to shoot. The other player clicks Q and A to move to vertically and W to shoot. A player wins when he reaches 30 points. Good Luck!

In class, we were assigned to make Ignite presentations. An Ignite presentation is when the slides move automatically after 15 seconds. This lets you focus on the audience and not need to worry about the transitions of the slides. I did mine on why Scarsdale is a good place for families. We had a week to create and practice our Ignites. After a week, it was time to present in front of the class. I was really nervous because I didn’t wan’t to talk faster than slides were moving. This happened a few times when I was practicing. After a couple of people went, Mrs. Edwards picked me to present. I was terrified. I had no intention of going this early. When my presentation got put onto the screen, I didn’t have much time to get ready before it started. After the first slide, I realized that I was doing okay. I was sticking to the pace of my slides. After that I felt way less nervous. When I finished I was relieved. I was really happy I got it over with.

Last Wednesday, my group had our debate. Our topic was, should we be exploring underwater or in space. Nobody wanted to be on the underwater side so I volunteered with Kevin. We did a lot of research and came up with reasons and examples to support our claim. We also came up with counter to the other side’s reason and examples. I was very confident that we would do well. Finally, we were ready the for the final showdown, Kevin and Sam vs. Ally and Caitlyn! The debate was being videotaped. In the end everyone, including the other team, thought we won. We did a very good job. We were very clear and had better evidence. Ally and Caitlyn were a little bit too quiet.

Testing

When we were testing our Rube Goldberg we needed to make sure we placed each piece in the right spot. One problem area we had was when a Jenga piece needed to hit a marble off the table. Sometimes we would have the Jenga piece too close to the marble and then the Jenga piece would hit the top of the marble and the marble would not roll. First we switched the Jenga with a Magnatile because the Magnatile was heavier and wider. We had more room for error with the Magnatile. Each time we set it up, we would test to make sure the Magnatile was going to hit the right part of the marble. We marked it with a string. This made the problem area more consistent.

We had the same problem with domino and the Anki Overdrive battery-operated car. We could not get the domino to hit the right part of the car each time. We tested the placement of the domino and marked where it worked. This saved time in the set up because we knew where to put everything. To test the steps it takes more time, but in the end it saves you time.

 

Crazy Fails

When I was filming my Rube Goldberg with Eli, we had a ton of crazy fails. A lot of times we would get to the end and then something unexpected would happen. We also had different steps do crazy tricks. Sometimes we would get so close and then fail. It was really frustrating.

The first crazy fail we had was our best round yet at the beginning of our first day of testing. We got to the step where the wheel was supposed to spin from the train going down the track. The wheel didn’t spin. We had no clue what happened. The wheel had been successful every time we tested it so we did not know what happened in this actual attempt. Then I noticed the string was lying on the ground. The string was supposed to be attached to the wheel and the popsicle stick. I knew Eli and I didn’t move the string. I thought it might have been the work of my cat, but she wasn’t downstairs. Then I realized my sister, Leila, came downstairs earlier and tripped over something. I didn’t know what it was at first, but then I knew she was the one who accidentally ripped the string off the wheel. That was so disappointing.

We had two crazy fails where we got to the last step and then the rose went into the vase and just came back out. We had no idea why because it was working when we tested it. We tried many ways to fix it. We added a rose with a shorter stem and we tried a rose with a longer stem. It didn’t make a difference. Then we realized that the vase was too small for the rose to consistently go in so we got a taller one. The taller vase was too narrow. We also tried a wide, short vase and that was too short. We finally got a vase that was shaped so that the rose could lay on the sides of the vase and stay in place. This made it easier for the train to push the rose in. The vase was pretty tall and wide.  We thought we solved all our problems with the rose going into the vase until we tested the next round. When we got to the final step again, Thomas the Train was pushing the rose and it just wouldn’t go in for five seconds. Thomas the Train did not have a lot of power. We were just waiting there in shock. Finally Thomas the Train somehow pushed the rose into the vase and drove over the rose into the vase. It worked out for us, but unfortunately our successful try caused Thomas to die a sad drowning death.

This video shows what was supposed to happen with the wheel.

Being Precise

I realized when I was testing my Rube Goldberg with Eli that you need to be very precise with where you place each object. We were not that focused on making sure each piece would work. If one step in your Rube Goldberg is off, the whole thing won’t work and then you have to reset every single step. It saves time when you have your steps lined up the right way. Most of our fails were because a domino didn’t hit our marble in the right place or the Magnatile blocking our train was too close to the edge of the track. When there was a fail, then we would have to set the whole contraption up again and it would waste a lot of time. When you are trying to get a success, you need each step to work so having one careless mistake makes you reset everything.

We also had to make sacrifices so that each step would work. For example, we had our Jenga pieces making too sharp of a turn and it was not working consistently. To make it more consistent, we made the turn not as sharp. At the beginning we were willing to take risk. As the Rube Goldberg started to fail more and more we knew we had to play it safe. That’s why our first success came when we had taken a ten minute break to charge the cars and go over each step. I also realize that little things can go wrong that you do not expect. For example, we thought the Anki overdrive car had only one problem and that is it wouldn’t get pushed onto the track. Then we realized sometimes when the Jenga piece hits it, it would drive off the track or it would slip off the track because of the water. A lot of these things could have made us frustrated, but instead we just tried our best to set each step up as well as we could. By the end, the steps were getting to be more consistent.

Finally a Success

It was our second testing day, attempt number 41. Eli’s dad just got to my house to pick up Eli and we were running out of time for the day. We had been charging Guardian (an Anki Overdrive battery-powered car). Everything was set up perfectly except Guardian. Since we had been charging Guardian, it had a bit too much power and we couldn’t keep it in the normal spot. Every time we put it down, it would just plow its way onto the track and we needed it to stay put. We put it further off the track so it would stop moving. I ran to get Eli’s phone before Guardian could go.

We started the video and Eli said, “Attempt 41” and turned on the shower. After five seconds, the pitcher swung in to the door which hit the video game pieces, which then hit the Jenga pieces and then the Jenga pieces barely hit the Anki overdrive car. At first the car didn’t move and Eli already started yelling, “Noooo!”  I was ready to stop the video when the car started shaking and was about to get on the track. Boom! It got on! Yesssss! But NOOOO! It then spun off the track. We didn’t have time to stop the video before it came back on after doing a 360 degree turn. It somehow made it up our ramp and hit the next step, a pool ball. The ball bumped the button on the WoBoto remote which knocked down the Jenga pieces. Next a Magnatile hit the marble with a string attached to it. The marble pulled down the Magnatile that was in front of the train.

The train was now chugging on its way. We were so excited that I stopped focusing on the camera. Eli kept yelling, “What just happened? What just happened?” He was so excited that he said it around ten times. Next the train hit the Jenga pieces which knocked down the subway train. That caused the bike wheel to spin, which pulled out the first popiscle stick of a chain reaction. All the popsicle sticks went down. It was the best run we’d ever had! At the end of the popsicle stick chain, the heavy marble came down which pulled the string holding the Jenga piece that blocked Thomas the Train. The final stretch was when Thomas the Train pushed the rose into the vase. YYYYEEEEESSSS! We were jumping up and down, but then we watched the video and realized it was garbage! I had forgotten all about video taping and missed taping many of the steps. I was so disappointed. I think we might need to do it again!

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.