Our Rube Goldberg Machine
Our first project of the year was the Rube Goldberg machine. A Rube Goldberg machine is a machine which does a simple task using the most and complex tasks as possible. For our machine we used 10 steps to shoot a Nerf dart out of a gun. My group was Jenna, Tyler, Brian, and myself. For our project we had to create a machine using at least ten steps, 5 simple machines, and three different energy transfers. We had eleven days to complete the project, and when we had finished we had to write a report and present it to the general public. This is an autopsy report of what we did.
We ran into quite a few issues building this machine. We didn't use our time wisely, which led to a struggle of getting everything ready in the last few days. Our first major issue was our pulley system. We spend a good two or three days working on that. finally we got it working and realized we had wasted a lot of time. After we got all our step to work, we found out that our machine did not have enough steps. We panicked a bit at first, then decided to have a second final product. We decided to make the car release a poster and fall on to a lever which wold release confetti into the air. It worked.
These are all the steps we had.
Step 1: Golf ball rolls down set of inclined planes.
Mechanical advantage: 2.4
Step 2: golf ball rolls down a screw.
Mechanical advantage: 3.24
Step 3: golf ball roll down second inclined plane.
Mechanical advantage: 2.6
Step 4: golf ball falls into a cup attached to a pulley system.
Mechanical advantage: 1
Step 5: pulley raises a lever with a car on it.
Mechanical advantage: 12.2
Step 6: raised lever allows car to overcome wedge and go down inclined plane.
Mechanical advantage: 4.7
Step 7: car hits rolled up sign.
Force required to make sign fall: 1.7 Newtons
Step 8: car connected to nerf gun falls off table and gives enough force for the nerf gun to fire.
Force required to shoot gun: 5 Newtons
Step 9: rolled up sign falls on lever making other side of lever to go up.
Mechanical advantage: 1.7
Step 10: confetti in cup on other side shoots upward.
Potential and kinetic energy of confetti: 0.00235 Joules
Reflections
I really enjoyed working on this project. At the beginning, I think our whole group hated the project because it seemed like nothing was going correctly. As soon as we got the pulley and inclined plane set up, things began getting better. I really liked my group and I think we (mostly) worked pretty well together. I think we should have used our time more sufficiently, therefore we wouldn't have had to come in during so many lunches and we wouldn't be stressing over it until the final day. In the end, our machine worked most of the time, which we were all pretty happy about. Of course, we all still wanted to destroy it, but we were pretty proud of what we had created. It was worth the time and effort we spent into it. It was a really cool project.
Our first project of the year was the Rube Goldberg machine. A Rube Goldberg machine is a machine which does a simple task using the most and complex tasks as possible. For our machine we used 10 steps to shoot a Nerf dart out of a gun. My group was Jenna, Tyler, Brian, and myself. For our project we had to create a machine using at least ten steps, 5 simple machines, and three different energy transfers. We had eleven days to complete the project, and when we had finished we had to write a report and present it to the general public. This is an autopsy report of what we did.
We ran into quite a few issues building this machine. We didn't use our time wisely, which led to a struggle of getting everything ready in the last few days. Our first major issue was our pulley system. We spend a good two or three days working on that. finally we got it working and realized we had wasted a lot of time. After we got all our step to work, we found out that our machine did not have enough steps. We panicked a bit at first, then decided to have a second final product. We decided to make the car release a poster and fall on to a lever which wold release confetti into the air. It worked.
These are all the steps we had.
Step 1: Golf ball rolls down set of inclined planes.
Mechanical advantage: 2.4
Step 2: golf ball rolls down a screw.
Mechanical advantage: 3.24
Step 3: golf ball roll down second inclined plane.
Mechanical advantage: 2.6
Step 4: golf ball falls into a cup attached to a pulley system.
Mechanical advantage: 1
Step 5: pulley raises a lever with a car on it.
Mechanical advantage: 12.2
Step 6: raised lever allows car to overcome wedge and go down inclined plane.
Mechanical advantage: 4.7
Step 7: car hits rolled up sign.
Force required to make sign fall: 1.7 Newtons
Step 8: car connected to nerf gun falls off table and gives enough force for the nerf gun to fire.
Force required to shoot gun: 5 Newtons
Step 9: rolled up sign falls on lever making other side of lever to go up.
Mechanical advantage: 1.7
Step 10: confetti in cup on other side shoots upward.
Potential and kinetic energy of confetti: 0.00235 Joules
Reflections
I really enjoyed working on this project. At the beginning, I think our whole group hated the project because it seemed like nothing was going correctly. As soon as we got the pulley and inclined plane set up, things began getting better. I really liked my group and I think we (mostly) worked pretty well together. I think we should have used our time more sufficiently, therefore we wouldn't have had to come in during so many lunches and we wouldn't be stressing over it until the final day. In the end, our machine worked most of the time, which we were all pretty happy about. Of course, we all still wanted to destroy it, but we were pretty proud of what we had created. It was worth the time and effort we spent into it. It was a really cool project.