Rube Goldberg was a cartoonist, well known for his elaborate inventions that solved simple tasks, shown in the picture below. That is what we are trying to make as our first project in the all new STEM program.
Here is our finished product of our own Rube Goldberg machine: (We substituted a pencil for eggs that we didn't have at the time)
This project has been a great start to this new STEM program! It took tons of hard work and time, but we finally did it!
This project has been a great start to this new STEM program! It took tons of hard work and time, but we finally did it!
In our Rube Goldberg project we tried to crack an egg in the most elaborate way possible. We started of by brainstorming what we should do for our Rube Goldberg project. Then we made a prototype of our Rube Goldberg project and started building. Our original prototype was similar in some ways, but different in a lot of ways to our finished Rube Goldberg project. The building itself of the project was tedious and we had to tweak our project numerous times in order for it to work for the most part.
Once we had finished building we worked on finding out all the physics behind everything that happened in our project. This was probably the hardest part, since we are knew to physics problems and we had tons of them to do. We did finish it though and found calculations for just about everything that was going on. We also made a sketch of our project that was to scale. Then we made a project history of how we made it and our triumphs and errors while making it. Finally, we presented it to our fellow classmates, and at STEM Night to students, kids, parents, and engineers. Presenting it to everyone was nerve-racking. Our project didn't work consistently and we had tons of engineers and adults to impress. Our group was tense for the first few, but later on it was a breeze talking about what we had done.
From this project we learned a lot of physics concepts. It has taught us a lot about physics and how everything works. We also learned it's extremely hard to try and calculate everything that is going on.
Force: Force =ma or mass multiplied by its acceleration. We used this equation to find the forces of several things like the car and marbles. We also had to calculate force in a number of other equations. We found the force of a marble hitting another marble in our project.
Potential Energy: PE = mgh or mass times gravitational force times height. Potential energy is the energy that something potentially has before an action happens with it, like a pencil held in the air. We found PE when a marble was sitting, waiting to be released.
Kinetic Energy: KE = 1/2 mass times Velocity squared. Kinetic energy is the energy something has while in action, like a pencil falling in the air. While it's falling its KE increases while its PE decreases until they fully transfer their energy from one to the other. We found KE when a marble was rolling down a ramp.
Work: Work = Fd or force times distance. It is how much force you can do a certain distance, which means even if you push on something with tons of force and move it 0 you did no work, bummer. We found work in our project for a marble rolling down a ramp.
We learned that all three, PE, KE, and Work are actually all equal. That means that if you wanted the kinetic energy of something, but you had only force and the distance of the force, then you actually have kinetic energy.
Impulse: Impulse = Ft or force times time. Impulse is used to find how long something was hit with a certain force. This explains why punching a pillow hurts less than punching a wall, because your fist is contacting the pillow for much longer than a wall, so less force is applied to your hand on the pillow than the wall. We used impulse when a weight was released and crushed an egg.
Momentum: Momentum = mv or mass times velocity. Momentum is kind of how much umph an object has. We used these to find the momentum of the car and the impulse of the pulley.
I think our project went very well and we learned a lot from it. I learned that I have great initiative and planning. I also learned that I have good leadership skills. Previously, my 7th and 8th grade years i have taken leadership class, so it's not too surprising that I'm a good leader, but It's not every day you get reminded of it. On the other hand, I think I took too much initiative and didn't give others a chance to participate as much. Because of this I think two of my group members didn't have enough of an opportunity to contribute, which backfired later on. I also could have been nicer about some situations and disagreements with the project.
Our project itself took a lot more effort than expected to actually create. We also had way more errors than we were expecting in our project. I think these errors were due to a lot of things that went in the air into something and also the toppling of over 20 marbles. Our project also went well in the areas with the marbles and also with the final piece where the car releases a pulley to crack an egg. Overall, our project had some ups and downs, but I think our end project is fantastic. It was lots of fun to create.
Once we had finished building we worked on finding out all the physics behind everything that happened in our project. This was probably the hardest part, since we are knew to physics problems and we had tons of them to do. We did finish it though and found calculations for just about everything that was going on. We also made a sketch of our project that was to scale. Then we made a project history of how we made it and our triumphs and errors while making it. Finally, we presented it to our fellow classmates, and at STEM Night to students, kids, parents, and engineers. Presenting it to everyone was nerve-racking. Our project didn't work consistently and we had tons of engineers and adults to impress. Our group was tense for the first few, but later on it was a breeze talking about what we had done.
From this project we learned a lot of physics concepts. It has taught us a lot about physics and how everything works. We also learned it's extremely hard to try and calculate everything that is going on.
Force: Force =ma or mass multiplied by its acceleration. We used this equation to find the forces of several things like the car and marbles. We also had to calculate force in a number of other equations. We found the force of a marble hitting another marble in our project.
Potential Energy: PE = mgh or mass times gravitational force times height. Potential energy is the energy that something potentially has before an action happens with it, like a pencil held in the air. We found PE when a marble was sitting, waiting to be released.
Kinetic Energy: KE = 1/2 mass times Velocity squared. Kinetic energy is the energy something has while in action, like a pencil falling in the air. While it's falling its KE increases while its PE decreases until they fully transfer their energy from one to the other. We found KE when a marble was rolling down a ramp.
Work: Work = Fd or force times distance. It is how much force you can do a certain distance, which means even if you push on something with tons of force and move it 0 you did no work, bummer. We found work in our project for a marble rolling down a ramp.
We learned that all three, PE, KE, and Work are actually all equal. That means that if you wanted the kinetic energy of something, but you had only force and the distance of the force, then you actually have kinetic energy.
Impulse: Impulse = Ft or force times time. Impulse is used to find how long something was hit with a certain force. This explains why punching a pillow hurts less than punching a wall, because your fist is contacting the pillow for much longer than a wall, so less force is applied to your hand on the pillow than the wall. We used impulse when a weight was released and crushed an egg.
Momentum: Momentum = mv or mass times velocity. Momentum is kind of how much umph an object has. We used these to find the momentum of the car and the impulse of the pulley.
I think our project went very well and we learned a lot from it. I learned that I have great initiative and planning. I also learned that I have good leadership skills. Previously, my 7th and 8th grade years i have taken leadership class, so it's not too surprising that I'm a good leader, but It's not every day you get reminded of it. On the other hand, I think I took too much initiative and didn't give others a chance to participate as much. Because of this I think two of my group members didn't have enough of an opportunity to contribute, which backfired later on. I also could have been nicer about some situations and disagreements with the project.
Our project itself took a lot more effort than expected to actually create. We also had way more errors than we were expecting in our project. I think these errors were due to a lot of things that went in the air into something and also the toppling of over 20 marbles. Our project also went well in the areas with the marbles and also with the final piece where the car releases a pulley to crack an egg. Overall, our project had some ups and downs, but I think our end project is fantastic. It was lots of fun to create.
This is what our Rube Goldberg project looks like altogether
Here is a video of our project in action working. We had to substitute a pencil for eggs that we didn't have.
This is the project history that has everything we did in the project and also some calculations that we made
This was our original plan; You can see our project is nowhere near that now.
These are pictures of all the calculations we did on all the steps of our project