Our Rube Goldberg machine(The Buzzer Beater) video is on the button below
We were able to complete the project goal of increasing our knowledge about simple machines and energy transfers. The task of this project was to create an effective way of doing something simple while making it the most complex and creative way possible through 10 or more steps. We were required to have 5 simple machines on our project like the lever, pulley, inclined plane, wedge, and screw.
Our Rube Goldberg project was a very complex one. Its three most complex steps were the newtons cradle(step 6), triggering the tennis ball(step 8), and the basketball dunk(step 10). Our end result started with shooting a basketball but do to some technical difficulties as you saw that didn't happen. We came up with a better result that would work every time and that was a dunk or layup machine. We decided that since the ball wouldn't end up shooting every time we changed the end result. the tennis ball sadly didn't work every time. Happened due to the marble not being able to knock it off. We tried to make this better by putting the tennis ball more on the edge but it didn't always work as you saw in the video. The Newtons cradle presented itself with quite a few challenges. First the construction process wasn't so easy until we decided to drill into the golf ball instead of using rubber bands. one we set them up they didn't always knock the marble off just right. We fixed this with a wise suggestion from a anonymous source telling us to have a domino after the newtons cradle ton knock off the marble. This project presented itself full of challenges and I hope we conquered them.
We had a total of 11 steps on our project. The first step was to kick the marble, after that the marble went down an iclined plane into a small funnel. Shortly after the funnel our little marble made its way through the journey of 5 inclined planes which was that loud noise you heard at the beginning of our video. Eventually after our marbles path down the inclined planes it hit another ball for our fourth step. Sadly our marbles journey had to come to an end during our fifth step which hit our gold ball off a lever. The golfball thundered its way down the track as it set off our sixth step our newtons cradle. This newtons cradle set another marble on its way but this one was headed down a funnel. This funnel was a special one being our seventh step but leading into the coolest thing on our whole project the blade. The eighth step was the marble causing the tennis ball to roll down and set off the blade. We then had the blade lead into our final steps the tenth the pulley and the eleventh the dunk. The exciting and dangerous blade cut the string to the pulleys and dunked the basketball. Our complicated steps may look simple but trust me they weren't.
To complete this project we had to know many equations. The most important one in our project was force=mass times acceleration. We were able to figure out the acceleration by dividing time by change in velocity. We calculated the Mechanical advantage of the pulley by input distance over output distance.The marbles had quite a bit of momentum which we calculated by mass times velocity. The work produced by our newtons cradle was calculated by multiplying force times distance.
Through this project i learned many new things i didn't realize before. This project opened horizons that when everyone works together it made things a lot easier. For example, while Arno and I were working on one step Shasta and Hana would work on another. Or when we passed our building limit by a little bit Arno and i tweaked the project wile Shasta and Hana worked on the calculations. I also was able to uncover the fact that i am good with my hands with building and designing things. There was some content that i was unable to excel in such as i could never quite get a grasp around how to do the blade until Arno came up with our idea. If we were to do this again I would say not to use a tennis ball and instead use a lacrosse ball but other than that I thought our project ran smoothly. I will continue to work on my knowledge of the physic numbers.
Our Rube Goldberg project was a very complex one. Its three most complex steps were the newtons cradle(step 6), triggering the tennis ball(step 8), and the basketball dunk(step 10). Our end result started with shooting a basketball but do to some technical difficulties as you saw that didn't happen. We came up with a better result that would work every time and that was a dunk or layup machine. We decided that since the ball wouldn't end up shooting every time we changed the end result. the tennis ball sadly didn't work every time. Happened due to the marble not being able to knock it off. We tried to make this better by putting the tennis ball more on the edge but it didn't always work as you saw in the video. The Newtons cradle presented itself with quite a few challenges. First the construction process wasn't so easy until we decided to drill into the golf ball instead of using rubber bands. one we set them up they didn't always knock the marble off just right. We fixed this with a wise suggestion from a anonymous source telling us to have a domino after the newtons cradle ton knock off the marble. This project presented itself full of challenges and I hope we conquered them.
We had a total of 11 steps on our project. The first step was to kick the marble, after that the marble went down an iclined plane into a small funnel. Shortly after the funnel our little marble made its way through the journey of 5 inclined planes which was that loud noise you heard at the beginning of our video. Eventually after our marbles path down the inclined planes it hit another ball for our fourth step. Sadly our marbles journey had to come to an end during our fifth step which hit our gold ball off a lever. The golfball thundered its way down the track as it set off our sixth step our newtons cradle. This newtons cradle set another marble on its way but this one was headed down a funnel. This funnel was a special one being our seventh step but leading into the coolest thing on our whole project the blade. The eighth step was the marble causing the tennis ball to roll down and set off the blade. We then had the blade lead into our final steps the tenth the pulley and the eleventh the dunk. The exciting and dangerous blade cut the string to the pulleys and dunked the basketball. Our complicated steps may look simple but trust me they weren't.
To complete this project we had to know many equations. The most important one in our project was force=mass times acceleration. We were able to figure out the acceleration by dividing time by change in velocity. We calculated the Mechanical advantage of the pulley by input distance over output distance.The marbles had quite a bit of momentum which we calculated by mass times velocity. The work produced by our newtons cradle was calculated by multiplying force times distance.
Through this project i learned many new things i didn't realize before. This project opened horizons that when everyone works together it made things a lot easier. For example, while Arno and I were working on one step Shasta and Hana would work on another. Or when we passed our building limit by a little bit Arno and i tweaked the project wile Shasta and Hana worked on the calculations. I also was able to uncover the fact that i am good with my hands with building and designing things. There was some content that i was unable to excel in such as i could never quite get a grasp around how to do the blade until Arno came up with our idea. If we were to do this again I would say not to use a tennis ball and instead use a lacrosse ball but other than that I thought our project ran smoothly. I will continue to work on my knowledge of the physic numbers.