Description: A Rube Goldberg machine is a machine that makes a simple task complicated by combining multiple steps that trigger one after the other to complete the final task. To fit the requirements, our Rube Goldberg’s needed to have at least 12 steps, needed to last at least 20 seconds, needed to employ a simple machine, such as a pulley or lever, needed to have an object that was raised or projectiled at least 12 inches, and needed to work from start to finish without any assistance.
Reflecection: Our Rube Goldberg goal was to make a raw pizza. Although a lot of things went wrong which cause to only have sauce and pizza crust. Our rube began with a marble rolling and knocks down a bunch of dominoes which cause a mousetrap to set off. When the mouse trap goes off it releases a boot. The boot kicks a can down a ramp and then the can catches a piece of tape that's connected to blocks that are keeping the ball in place. Once the can catches on the piece of tape it cause those pieces of wood to be taken away so that the balls can roll down the ramp hit a key on the piano and continue with their jobs. After hitting the keys, each ball falls from the piano and one of the balls goes on a ramp on the ground and the other ball lands on a paper plate. This paper plate is connected to a pvc pipe and rubber bands causing the piece of wood that the cup of sauce is on to stay in place. Once the ball lands on the paper plate all of the stored energy is released and the piece of wood moves due to the weight of the sauce, causing the sauce to pour out of the cup. The sauce lands on the pizza crust. The sauce gets spread a couple seconds after the sauce comes out. It gets spread by a big brush that gets hit by the ball that landed on the ramp. Once the ball hits the brush it cause the brush to lightly spin.
There were a lot of difficult things about this project. The most difficult thing was modifying our plan after realizing that we set our bar way too high and could accomplish a lot of our ideas. We did pretty good with time management but towards the end nothing started working and we then had to work tediously to figure everything out and that's when the time management got hard. Another thing that was kind of difficult at time was partnership but for the most part we worked very well together. The one physics concept we used the most was collision. Many of our steps are using collision, so understanding how much energy is transferred from one object to the next in a collision was very important in constructing our rube.
Questions:
1. What hands on skills did you learn through working in your group? (construction, problem solving, collaboration, design, time management, etc...) I learned a lot about how to do certain things such as how to run a drill bid. I learned how to work well with my partners even though we weren’t always on the best terms. We learned how to problem solve quickly and collaborate well. We learned how to use our time wisely and design our rube so that it looks interesting, fits the requirements and still complete the task. 2. What steps were most challenging to make work? (How did you troubleshoot or redesign) We had a lot of troubles that cause us to redesign our rube multiple times. We had a lot of trouble with space and how we were going to fit all of the things that we wanted so that caused us to take out things and redesign things. We also had trouble with figuring out how to make the balls fall off the piano and hit or go on the certain things they needed to be on. We had trouble trying to have the boot hit the can just right so that it falls down the ramp perfectly. We had to figure out a way to make the sauce fall. So overall our rube was full of challenging things. 3. Explain the flow of energy throughout the whole rube from start to finish, (did it work all with just the input or did you add more along the way? In what ways is your rube efficient or NOT in transferring energy from one step to another) Our rube has had lots of things taken out and other things added. Our rube is not the most efficient in transmitting energy through out all of it but through most of it. 4. What one physics concept from your analysis is most important to the overall function of your rube. Our Velocity is a huge part of our rube and it affects our rube a lot. 5. What was the hardest part of doing this project, how did you persevere? Figuring out how to make our rube function, fit the requirements and complete the task. We just did a lot of teamwork and problem solving. 6. Personally what was your biggest contribution to the project? I think we all did a lot of work. I think I contributed a lot in refining and redesigning certain things. Also making certain things in our rube .
Life in the Cold
For this project we decided to test how color affects the insultation of heat in a shelter. Our hypothesis was, If the color of a material affects the shelter, then we think that the black sheet will affect it the most because dark colors absorb the most heat. In testing for this we had to make a fort, and then put the tarp and different sheets on top. We then put it outside and put a cup of really hot water in the shelter. We then checked the temperature every 15 minuets starting at the middle of the day. But we had some issues with keeping constant variables so that cause our data to be not fully accurate. Our result proved our hypothesis correct though. The black she did the best. But something that was kind of surprising was that the white sheet did a better job then the pink sheet.