Rube Goldberg Machine
Project description
The process of creating the Rube Goldberg Machine was a long one but, it was worth it because I learned a lot. My group started out the process with trying to figure out what our objective was going to be. We decided our goal was going to be feeding a fish. We also named the project Feeding Nemo. After a week of different labs dealing with different simple machines, we were ready to start planning the machine. We drew an initial blueprint. This blueprint consisted a lever at the ending of our screw, a toy car being released after the lever was activated, and a complex cup chain reaction. We knew that some of our ideas may not be realistic but, we wanted to see if we could make them work.
Once the building processed started, we started by attaching our halves of a 3x8 piece of wood. We then decided to attach our first step, the inclined plane. We were now ready for the screw, or so we thought. We couldn't figure out a way to attach the screw. We tried to drill holes in the wood to feed the screw in and out, but that didn't allow the balls to roll through smoothly. After a day or two, we finally figured out how we were gonna hold the screw up. We put a support beam in the middle of the screw with other pieces of wood coming out of the support beam to add extra support for the screw. Getting the screw on the project was probably the hardest thing to do in this project. From there we decided have the balls roll from the screw onto an inclined plane. At the end of the inclined plane we drilled a hole so the airsoft pellets could fall through into the next step. The next step was a pulley. Underneath the drilled hole was a cup that attached to the pulley, and on the other side of that pulley was the lever. We had to add the pulley and inclined plane because in our original plan we had the lever underneath the screw. But, due to height issues we had to make sure the lever was higher up. So, we solved that problem by adding those two other steps. After the lever was activated from the pellets falling into the cup a golf ball would fall from the opposite side onto another inclined plane. The rolling golf ball would then pick up momentum and knock a cup of weights off the inclined plane. The falling cup of weights triggers our second pulley to pull up a little block of wood from yet another inclined plane, which will release a wiffle ball. The wiffle ball will then hit a wedge which will stop the ball but, knock over the fish food into a series of mini inclined planes and then the food will fall into the fish bowl. Therefore feeding the fish.
Once the building processed started, we started by attaching our halves of a 3x8 piece of wood. We then decided to attach our first step, the inclined plane. We were now ready for the screw, or so we thought. We couldn't figure out a way to attach the screw. We tried to drill holes in the wood to feed the screw in and out, but that didn't allow the balls to roll through smoothly. After a day or two, we finally figured out how we were gonna hold the screw up. We put a support beam in the middle of the screw with other pieces of wood coming out of the support beam to add extra support for the screw. Getting the screw on the project was probably the hardest thing to do in this project. From there we decided have the balls roll from the screw onto an inclined plane. At the end of the inclined plane we drilled a hole so the airsoft pellets could fall through into the next step. The next step was a pulley. Underneath the drilled hole was a cup that attached to the pulley, and on the other side of that pulley was the lever. We had to add the pulley and inclined plane because in our original plan we had the lever underneath the screw. But, due to height issues we had to make sure the lever was higher up. So, we solved that problem by adding those two other steps. After the lever was activated from the pellets falling into the cup a golf ball would fall from the opposite side onto another inclined plane. The rolling golf ball would then pick up momentum and knock a cup of weights off the inclined plane. The falling cup of weights triggers our second pulley to pull up a little block of wood from yet another inclined plane, which will release a wiffle ball. The wiffle ball will then hit a wedge which will stop the ball but, knock over the fish food into a series of mini inclined planes and then the food will fall into the fish bowl. Therefore feeding the fish.
Reflections
This project has had it's ups and it's downs. But, either way I had an amazing time creating this machine. Throughout the duration of this project my whole group and I all became better friends and we all got to help each other through our first project assignment in Stem. We had a few issues with our machine. The first problem was the screw was just an absolute pain to attach to the project. Before we finally figured out how we were going to attach it we all got a little frusturated at ourselves and the machine. We also had trouble always agreeing as a group as to what we were going to do to fix things or improve things. During these issues I as an individual learned how to just go with the flow and to have more patience. Our group overall though did work very well together, we are all very proud of the machine we have created together and had a blast building it.
Concepts
Potential Energy- The energy possessed by a body by virtue of its position relative to others, stresses within itself, electric charge, and other factors.
Kinetic Energy- The energy that a body possesses by virtue of being in motion.
Momentum- The quantity of motion of a moving body, measured as a product of its mass and velocity.
Force- It's the strength or energy as an attribute of physical action or movement.
Mechanical Advantage- The ratio of the force produced by a machine to the force applied to it, used in assessing the performance of a machine.
Kinetic Energy- The energy that a body possesses by virtue of being in motion.
Momentum- The quantity of motion of a moving body, measured as a product of its mass and velocity.
Force- It's the strength or energy as an attribute of physical action or movement.
Mechanical Advantage- The ratio of the force produced by a machine to the force applied to it, used in assessing the performance of a machine.