A Rube Goldberg machine is a long contraption that has many steps and is made to do a very simple task. Rube Goldberg machines don’t work on the first try. It takes many tries and fails to finally get it right. Sometimes it can be frustrating, but when it finally works, it is worth it. You will be hearing about another Rube Goldberg machine today, so get ready to learn about the process it takes to make this fantastic machine.
When I first heard we had to do a Rube Goldberg machine, I was excited, but I knew that it would be hard. The first step was to do a sketch of your Rube Goldberg machine. At first I thought it would be easy, but I was definitely wrong. I thought it was super hard to think of all the steps for it because I was constantly thinking if it would work in the final Rube Goldberg and how it would work. I was originally thinking of pushing down the toaster, but I realized you need to apply solid pressure to push it down and that would be hard, so I decided to change it to putting a cherry on top of an ice cream sundae! This still would be pretty hard! I also had to include at least 3 simple machines! I knew I was going to use an inclined plane, but I didn’t really know for the rest. I realized that a toy car has a wheel and axle in it so that works, and I finally decided to use a lever. Then all I had to do was figure out the steps in between and then I was all set!
Before starting to build the Rube Goldberg, I noticed that it would be hard to figure out a place to do it. First of all, I would need to find a place where there are flat surfaces that I could use and still make an inclined plane at, I needed to know how to get from one height to another with tables and other flat surfaces, and I needed to find a place where I can have all my resources and materials. I figured that it could be my basement. Then I started to build! I started testing certain parts of it like the part where wood blocks fall over like dominoes. I was trying to test the part where a toy car goes down an inclined plane, but 2 problems came up. 1. The car kept going down by itself. I fixed that by putting a piece of straw as a stopper on the inclined plane. The second problem was that the dominoes couldn’t knock the car hard enough to move. I kept trying to make it work but I finally realized that it wouldn’t work. I needed to change my build. I changed it a lot by taking out the car going down an inclined plane, and I replaced it with a marble going down a hot wheels track. (still an inclined plane) I also changed the beginning and took away the lever in the middle and put it in the beginning. I made more steps in the beginning so I had enough. Finally I got a solid plan for my Rube Goldberg machine. Then I started building.
Some resources and videos I watched while planning were Joseph’s Machines on youtube. I loved watching all of his videos because they were funny, and they gave me some good ideas. I also watched the video “Rube Goldberg easy examples” by Kelly Dunn on youtube. A video that helped me know how to use simple machines in Rube Goldbergs was the video “Simple Machines and the Rube Goldberg Challenge” By TeachEngineering on youtube. A few videos that were fun to watch were “OK Go – This Too Shall Pass – Rube Goldberg Machine – Official Video” and Sprice Machines. Those were all my resources that I used and all the videos I watched while making my Rube Goldberg machine.
Planning and building my Rube Goldberg was a bit of a struggle. It was hard to find things to do in it, and I was always thinking about it and how it would work, but it was a super fun experience so far building it! I really enjoyed this part of this amazing project. Below you can see a picture of my original Rube Goldberg sketch (before the revisions). I hope you liked hearing about this process so far!
