What is a Rube Goldberg Machine? It is a long, complicated series of steps to perform a simple, everyday task. This is what my group and I tried to emulate. Our machine is able to repeatedly go from a marble elevator to clanging two metal rods, and pulling a prank.
Reflection:
My group's Rube Goldberg machine, made by myself, Ryan Tavenner, Sarah Teel, and Simon Swetland, like anything, had many high points and low points. One low point and high point had to do with patience. The low point was that we all had such great ideas in the design faze, and everyone thinks that their own idea was the best. On many occasions, I would get very frustrated and I would have to just calm down and take a deep breath. Throughout this low point, I tried to make it a high point by making it a moment of learning. I gained patience, and learned how to better deal with stress. Another pit was time management. We ended up doing the presentation with only a few days to go, and this made it a more stressful experience for all of us. A great peak, however, was working together. We meshed greatly after the first few days, and we often recognized what we each wanted to do. We were actually able to work on completely different things, and know when to come together to attach it and move on. Another peak was gaining confidence in front of a crowd. At the beginning of the presentation night, I spoke fairly softly, looked at the presentation too much, and often caught myself looking down or away from the audience. After the first couple of presentations, I became crisper, had my part of the presentation memorized, and was very confident. I felt like I could have presented it in front of thousands. Overall, our group worked very well together, and as much as I will miss that group, I greatly look forward to our next project.
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Our Rube Goldberg machine starts out by turning the hand crank on the marble elevator in the upper left hand corner of the picture. What this does is it moves the marble up a track resembling an escalator. Then the marble drops out of the elevator and into a funnel. This directs the marble down a screw. The marble hits a block at the bottom of a screw which is tied to a pulley. This allows the block to fall, adding more weight to the pulley system, making it activate. The pulley then allows the lever holding a resting golf ball on it to lift up. Next, the golf ball rolls down its lever, then rolls on an incline plane. This takes the golf ball to a swivel at the end. This is an upright lever, that when the top is hit, the bottom swings forward and knocks the tennis ball downward onto a large lever. On the side of this lever that goes down, the tennis ball rolls and hits a metal rod which swings downward. It then hits another rod making a bell-like noise. This noise is our first of two endings. The second ending starts with the lever also going upwards. It hits a blue ball that rolls on a board, and hits a whoopee cushion. This falls onto a chair upon which an "unsuspecting" person will sit on it.
Concepts:
(Note: If you click on the name of a concept, you will be taken to a page to learn more about that concept.)
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