RUBE GOLDBERG MACHINE
For the past 4 weeks, my group in STEM and I built a Rube Goldberg machine. This is a machine with many complicated steps to do a simple task. Here is a video of our Rube Goldberg machine.
For building days one through eight, we worked on the top board of the project. This took a lot of time and patience. For building days nine through eleven, our group split into pairs to speed up the process on the bottom board. Because we did this, we finished building our machine earlier than expected. The steps are as follows:
1) We drop a weight connected to the wedge on the top of the machine, which kept a car from sliding down a ramp. The force of the weight going down caused the wedge to go up.
2) The car rolled down the ramp and into a cup.
3) When the car fell into the cup, it triggered a pulley. As the cup fell, a weight came up and hit a lever and activated it.
4) The lever tilted and made a marble roll down onto a ramp.
5) The marble rolls down a ramp.
6) The marble enters a screw.
7) Once the marble exits the screw, it goes down a zig-zagged path of ramps.
8) The marble hits a nerf ball.
9) The nerf ball rolls down an inclined plane.
10) The nerf ball hits a domino, triggering a domino path on a staircase.
11) The final domino hits a cup with dice, causing the cup to tilt and release the dice in a bowl.
We also created a schematic diagram, project history, and work for the physics in our project. We completed those for the following two days after we finished our machine.
REFLECTIONS
I think my group did very well on the project overall, and we had a great presentation and machine. During the construction of the project, though, I feel that we all learned a few concepts to carry to the future. For example, I learned patience and communication. I believe that my group (including me) had a lot of trouble communicating our ideas and agreeing on a few concepts. As an example, we couldn't agree on an end objective for the machine. A few people wanted to feed a pet, and one person wanted to roll Bokugon. So what I did is I took a step back along with my group to relax and let the subject go until later. Eventually, we decided on an end product for the machine: to roll dice. We also learned the aspect of time management. In the beginning of the project, I felt that we were behind. We later caught up, but we were still tweaking by the time we were supposed to finished. We are still improving on this, and I feel that we are going to do much better on our next project. I feel that we could have also expressed more ideas toward the beginning of the project, which we could also continue to improve.
CONCEPTS
We learned many physics concepts during this project. The are as follows:
~Force~ a push or pull on an object. This is found by multiplying mass and acceleration. Throughout our project, we calculated a lot of force. An example is when the wedge blocked the car. It exerted a certain amount of force on the car to keep it from falling down the inclined plane.
~Acceleration~ the change of speed of an object. It is found by dividing the change in velocity by the change in time. When the car rolls down the ramp, it has a certain acceleration.
~Mechanical Advantage~ how easy the simple machine made the work done. We used this concept for the pulley, and found it had the mechanical advantage of one by counting how many strings there were on the pulley excluding the string that was being pulled.
~Torque~ the calculation for work applying to levers. You find it by multiplying force and distance. The lever had 0.006J of torque.
~Speed/Velocity~ speed is the amount of distance an object covers in a certain amount of time, and velocity is speed with a given direction. You find by calculating distance over time. The marble has a certain velocity/speed according to its obstacles in our project.
~Momentum~ how much energy an object in motion is carrying. It is calculated by multiplying mass and velocity. The marble had a momentum of 0.002N.
~Potential Energy~ The energy an object has prior when it is in motion. It's calculated by multiplying mass, acceleration due to gravity (or 9.8m/s^2) and height. The marble had potential energy before it fell off the lever.
~Kinetic Energy~ an energy transfer- how much energy an object has due to motion. This is found by multiplying 1/2mass times velocity squared. When the marble hit the nerf ball, it transferred its kinetic energy to it.
~Toppling~ when the center of gravity is placed out of its area of support due to an object hitting it. The nerf ball caused toppling in the dominoes.
Thank You.
1) We drop a weight connected to the wedge on the top of the machine, which kept a car from sliding down a ramp. The force of the weight going down caused the wedge to go up.
2) The car rolled down the ramp and into a cup.
3) When the car fell into the cup, it triggered a pulley. As the cup fell, a weight came up and hit a lever and activated it.
4) The lever tilted and made a marble roll down onto a ramp.
5) The marble rolls down a ramp.
6) The marble enters a screw.
7) Once the marble exits the screw, it goes down a zig-zagged path of ramps.
8) The marble hits a nerf ball.
9) The nerf ball rolls down an inclined plane.
10) The nerf ball hits a domino, triggering a domino path on a staircase.
11) The final domino hits a cup with dice, causing the cup to tilt and release the dice in a bowl.
We also created a schematic diagram, project history, and work for the physics in our project. We completed those for the following two days after we finished our machine.
REFLECTIONS
I think my group did very well on the project overall, and we had a great presentation and machine. During the construction of the project, though, I feel that we all learned a few concepts to carry to the future. For example, I learned patience and communication. I believe that my group (including me) had a lot of trouble communicating our ideas and agreeing on a few concepts. As an example, we couldn't agree on an end objective for the machine. A few people wanted to feed a pet, and one person wanted to roll Bokugon. So what I did is I took a step back along with my group to relax and let the subject go until later. Eventually, we decided on an end product for the machine: to roll dice. We also learned the aspect of time management. In the beginning of the project, I felt that we were behind. We later caught up, but we were still tweaking by the time we were supposed to finished. We are still improving on this, and I feel that we are going to do much better on our next project. I feel that we could have also expressed more ideas toward the beginning of the project, which we could also continue to improve.
CONCEPTS
We learned many physics concepts during this project. The are as follows:
~Force~ a push or pull on an object. This is found by multiplying mass and acceleration. Throughout our project, we calculated a lot of force. An example is when the wedge blocked the car. It exerted a certain amount of force on the car to keep it from falling down the inclined plane.
~Acceleration~ the change of speed of an object. It is found by dividing the change in velocity by the change in time. When the car rolls down the ramp, it has a certain acceleration.
~Mechanical Advantage~ how easy the simple machine made the work done. We used this concept for the pulley, and found it had the mechanical advantage of one by counting how many strings there were on the pulley excluding the string that was being pulled.
~Torque~ the calculation for work applying to levers. You find it by multiplying force and distance. The lever had 0.006J of torque.
~Speed/Velocity~ speed is the amount of distance an object covers in a certain amount of time, and velocity is speed with a given direction. You find by calculating distance over time. The marble has a certain velocity/speed according to its obstacles in our project.
~Momentum~ how much energy an object in motion is carrying. It is calculated by multiplying mass and velocity. The marble had a momentum of 0.002N.
~Potential Energy~ The energy an object has prior when it is in motion. It's calculated by multiplying mass, acceleration due to gravity (or 9.8m/s^2) and height. The marble had potential energy before it fell off the lever.
~Kinetic Energy~ an energy transfer- how much energy an object has due to motion. This is found by multiplying 1/2mass times velocity squared. When the marble hit the nerf ball, it transferred its kinetic energy to it.
~Toppling~ when the center of gravity is placed out of its area of support due to an object hitting it. The nerf ball caused toppling in the dominoes.
Thank You.