This is my group: Sterling, Reed, Colin McCloskey, Kate Mayfield, and Annabel Milliner
Here is our project: Started building: September 3, 2014 Stopped building: September 31, 2014
About our project: Rube Goldberg: Flag on the Moon History:
Let’s us just say that every project will always have to be changed, especially our Rube Goldberg project. We pretty much changed the whole thing. We started off drilling the two boards together and painting our whole board because we didn’t want to do it last minute. After that we started building! We took a long time making inclined planes and levers out of wood. We soon drilled them into the board; we started going pretty slow in the beginning of all of this because most teams were near done. When we put the lever under our pegboard, it didn’t work for us. The pulley wasn’t working and the lever was getting super complicated. We decided to just get rid it and start from the top again. We came up with a brilliant idea to have one marble go over the pegboard, and a lot go through the pegboard into a cup that would bring a “fence” up releasing the marble on top of the pegboard. We decided to make these big changes last minute, so we were a little flustered. Most of the time the marbles would get stuck somewhere and be totally annoying but we kept making changes and fixing it. The marble would then go off onto the levers. We put two levers there, but we soon changed the second lever into an inclined plane because it would toss the marble off track. Then we made a screw out of a Frisbee and onto another inclined plane. The marble would go through a type of weird maze and hit a steel marble that rolled down a track. The marble would ride down and hit a basket that was connected by a nail. The marble would knock off the basket sending a “flag” on the moon that was on a pulley. Simultaneously the marble that knocked off the basket would keep rolling a hit one domino into a pile of flour and make a “POOF” like the moon dust when the flag sticks into the moon. Our picture of what we wanted our project to look like before we made it was completely different then what it looks like now. But I guess that was only for the best, because now it works. Whenever we try the whole thing out, it does take some time because it isn’t perfect, but it does work! We did get some blood in the job with all the drills, but overall it was a great project.
This is the powerpoint we presented at the Rube Goldberg Stem night!
Our presentation had 13 steps, when the requirement was only 10. 1. 5 marbles are dropped into funnel 1 and 1 marble is dropped into funnel (funnels act as screws) 2. inclined plane a with 5 marbles going down it 3. inclined plane b with one marble going down it 4. the 5 marbles from inclined plane a go through peg board 5. 5 marbles from peg board fall into cup on pulley and lift gate releasing marble on inclined b 6. marble on inclined plane b falls onto inclined plane c 7. from inclined plane c it falls onto our lever 8. from the lever it falls onto inclined plane d 9. Falls into screw 10. falls down inclined plane/maze e at the end of which knocks off a steel marble 11. origional marble and steel marble go down inclined plane e and knock basket off of nail 12. basket on pulley flies up into air and flat falls down into moon 13. marbles continue rolling onto inclined plane f and hit domino which falls in to moon dust (flour) making a "poof"
We used 5 out of the 6 simple Machines: -inclined plane- a flat supporting surface tilted at an angle, with one end higher than the other (equations: 1-ma=l/h ma=.18/.1 ma=1.8 2: ma=l/h ma=.18/.09 ma=2 3: ma=l/h ma=.21/.o1 ma= 21 4: ma=l/h ma= .11/.02 ma=5.5 5: ma=l/h ma=.12/.05 ma=2.4 6: ma=l/h ma=.27/.05 ma=5.4) -pulley-a wheel with a grooved rim around which a cord passes. It acts to change the direction of a force applied to the cord and is chiefly used (typically in combination) to raise heavy weights -lever-a rigid bar resting on a pivot, used to help move a heavy or firmly fixed load with one end when pressure is applied to the other -screw- a mechanism that converts rotational motion (equations: <screw #3> ma=13/1 ma=13) -wedge-a piece of wood, metal, or some other material having one thick end and tapering to a thin edge, that is driven between two objects or parts of an object to secure or separate them (equations: ma= l/w ma=.1/.01 ma=10) We unfortunately did not end up using the wheel and axle, though I am sure we would have tried to if we had more time.
Our first diagram before building: Our diagram of the finished product:
Reflection:
I absolutely loved this project because it really showed my creativity! I have always been the person doing the work in class group projects and now everyone is like that. Everyone in my group had pretty equal amounts of work distributed throughout the month. I loved how we got to build because it was something new to me, i was so happy i made the "pegboard" because it was a big hit during our presentation. Whenever i would do a project i would hate to go in at lunch to finish it or work on it a home, but that is not the case, because i loved doing that! It was sometimes difficult when things didn't work, but we made compromises and it came out beautifully. I loved my group but i feel like at certain times, i took over, because I was frustrated and wanted to get the job done. So i felt bad about that, but at least we got the stuff done. When we got our project to work, i was probably the happiest person in the world! It was so worth all the work i put into it, but to be honest i'm glad that we finished!