Description:
For our first freshmen project we did a Rube Goldberg machine named "The Mystery Machine," conveniently named after the Scooby Doo show. when we first started working on this project, we drew up some ideas that were fairly complicated and would be hard to make work on our machine. Next, we got to building. Our first challenge was to get the golf ball to hit in the exact spot we wanted it to hit. We did this by testing where the golf ball fell about four times. once we got the exact measurements, we glued down the platform to the side of the presentation. Next we spent a lot of time on our lever, perfecting it took many man hours, we had to glue down the triangle in the right spot and make our own lever out of one long piece of wood and a little square piece. After we worked on our own funnel to use for our marble to land in after it got launched into the air by the lever, we made the funnel out of many thin pieces of wood that wrapped around the vertical piece of our presentation. When the marble landed in the funnel the next step was creating an inclined plane that the marble would travel through to hit the dominoes forming an elastic collision, then causing the domino to fall into the cup which raised the pulley that we had made of two dixxie cups, string and one pulley that Mr. Williams had for us to use. The pulley would go all the way up to the top of our 2 x 1 piece of ply wood, after the pulley took the cup to the top it hit another pulley, sending it speeding down a zip-line that we had made with a piece of string stretching for one side of our project to the other side. Our pulley on the zip-line then crashed into the dominoes that set of a little toy car racing down a inclined plane. After that the car hit the next set of dominoes, which we made from pieces of wood. We specially made them to increase in size for the last one to have enough momentum to hit the last piece of wood that finally knocked the "Scooby Snacks" into the bowl.
After we finished all of the steps above we all thought it would be a good idea to put in a wheel and axle at the very top where the inclined plane was we did this by drilling a whole big enough for a nail to fit into it. we drilled out one small circular piece of wood and one big one. We glued the small one on the nail first, then we stuck the nail into the whole we drilled, after that we stuck the big circle on with glue. we attached a string to the big circle and then attached a block of wood to that string, in conclusion, when I twisted the little circle the big on would turn two times as much because it had a mechanical advantage of two, after I twisted it, the block would raise releasing the golf ball to hit the lever.
When we finished the whole machine it was time for us to do the calculations, these took a considerable amount of time because we had to get the measurements of every step in our whole machine. the hardest thing about the calculations was rounding up all of the equations, matching them up to our steps, and solving. after calculations we made a power point to show exactly what we did and how long it took us.
Concepts:
Lever: A lever is a rigid bar that pivots about one point and that is used to move an object at a second point by a force applied at the third.
Wheel and Axle: A wheel and axle is a cylindrical drum to which a wheel concentric with a drum is firmly fastened, ropes are so applied that as one unwinds from the wheel another rope is wound on to the drum.
Inclined Plane: a plane that is formed with a horizontal angle but never a right angle.
Pulley: A wheel driven by or driving a belt or of the like used to deliver force to a machine.
wedge: A piece of hard material with two principal faces meeting in a sharply acute angle, for holding objects by applying a pounding or driving force.
Reflection:
I really liked this project, I think that it is one of the most fun projects that I have ever done in school. I think our group worked really well together, our communication was amazing, and work ethic was really good too. Everyone was really kind, and we didn't fight about who would take the leadership role in the group, everyone shared it equally.
Some things that I should work on for next time are staying with my group more often, because at times I would find myself wondering of to talk to other groups, and ask them how they were doing. I could have helped more with the calculations and measurements. I think our group as a whole was great but I think that if we could have stayed on task a little more we would be unstoppable.
The link to the power point is right below.
For our first freshmen project we did a Rube Goldberg machine named "The Mystery Machine," conveniently named after the Scooby Doo show. when we first started working on this project, we drew up some ideas that were fairly complicated and would be hard to make work on our machine. Next, we got to building. Our first challenge was to get the golf ball to hit in the exact spot we wanted it to hit. We did this by testing where the golf ball fell about four times. once we got the exact measurements, we glued down the platform to the side of the presentation. Next we spent a lot of time on our lever, perfecting it took many man hours, we had to glue down the triangle in the right spot and make our own lever out of one long piece of wood and a little square piece. After we worked on our own funnel to use for our marble to land in after it got launched into the air by the lever, we made the funnel out of many thin pieces of wood that wrapped around the vertical piece of our presentation. When the marble landed in the funnel the next step was creating an inclined plane that the marble would travel through to hit the dominoes forming an elastic collision, then causing the domino to fall into the cup which raised the pulley that we had made of two dixxie cups, string and one pulley that Mr. Williams had for us to use. The pulley would go all the way up to the top of our 2 x 1 piece of ply wood, after the pulley took the cup to the top it hit another pulley, sending it speeding down a zip-line that we had made with a piece of string stretching for one side of our project to the other side. Our pulley on the zip-line then crashed into the dominoes that set of a little toy car racing down a inclined plane. After that the car hit the next set of dominoes, which we made from pieces of wood. We specially made them to increase in size for the last one to have enough momentum to hit the last piece of wood that finally knocked the "Scooby Snacks" into the bowl.
After we finished all of the steps above we all thought it would be a good idea to put in a wheel and axle at the very top where the inclined plane was we did this by drilling a whole big enough for a nail to fit into it. we drilled out one small circular piece of wood and one big one. We glued the small one on the nail first, then we stuck the nail into the whole we drilled, after that we stuck the big circle on with glue. we attached a string to the big circle and then attached a block of wood to that string, in conclusion, when I twisted the little circle the big on would turn two times as much because it had a mechanical advantage of two, after I twisted it, the block would raise releasing the golf ball to hit the lever.
When we finished the whole machine it was time for us to do the calculations, these took a considerable amount of time because we had to get the measurements of every step in our whole machine. the hardest thing about the calculations was rounding up all of the equations, matching them up to our steps, and solving. after calculations we made a power point to show exactly what we did and how long it took us.
Concepts:
Lever: A lever is a rigid bar that pivots about one point and that is used to move an object at a second point by a force applied at the third.
Wheel and Axle: A wheel and axle is a cylindrical drum to which a wheel concentric with a drum is firmly fastened, ropes are so applied that as one unwinds from the wheel another rope is wound on to the drum.
Inclined Plane: a plane that is formed with a horizontal angle but never a right angle.
Pulley: A wheel driven by or driving a belt or of the like used to deliver force to a machine.
wedge: A piece of hard material with two principal faces meeting in a sharply acute angle, for holding objects by applying a pounding or driving force.
Reflection:
I really liked this project, I think that it is one of the most fun projects that I have ever done in school. I think our group worked really well together, our communication was amazing, and work ethic was really good too. Everyone was really kind, and we didn't fight about who would take the leadership role in the group, everyone shared it equally.
Some things that I should work on for next time are staying with my group more often, because at times I would find myself wondering of to talk to other groups, and ask them how they were doing. I could have helped more with the calculations and measurements. I think our group as a whole was great but I think that if we could have stayed on task a little more we would be unstoppable.
The link to the power point is right below.
the_mystery_machine.pptx | |
File Size: | 795 kb |
File Type: | pptx |