Rube Goldberg Machines
The first project of the year for STEM was our Rube Goldberg Machines. Here's a little background on the one and only Rube Goldberg.
Rube Goldberg was a prize winning cartoonist, sculptor, and author. His real name was Reuben Lucious Goldberg and he was born in San Francisco on July 4, 1883. Goldberg graduated University of California Berkeley with a degreee in engineering and he went on to work as an engineer for the City of San Francisco Water and Sewers Department.
After six months of working with the Sewers Department Rube Goldberg left to become an office boy for the sports department of a San Francisco newspaper. He started submitting cartoons to the editor of the newspaper until it was published. Goldberg then moved to New York to work for the Evening Mail to draw cartoons full time. He went on to be a founding member of the National Cartoonist Society.
The original Rube Goldberg machine was comprised of an elaborate set of arms, gears, wheels, handles, cups, rods, put into motion by balls, canary cages, pails, boots, bathtubs, paddles, and live animals. Using all these parts, Goldberg made a machine that tries to accomplish a simple task by being extraordinarily complicated.
PROJECT HISTORY
Our original idea for our candy themed Rube Goldberg machine project was to have Matt catch the gum ball and put it into his mouth. The project's main objective now is trying to accomplish the task of getting a gum ball into a bowl by using a sequence of chain reactions with 5 out of the 6 simple machines.
Some of the differences between our first concept and our present concept is that initially the screw was going to be right at the beginning of this assignment, following directly after the gum ball left the gum ball machine. Also, instead of using spoons we intended to create a water-wheel like design. Since we were running out of time we had to adjust some ideas and make them easier to construct. Two days before the project was due, we placed 3 inclined planes at the bottom of our project, because we needed 3 more steps and the gum ball would bounce out of the bowl. We had ideas of using multiple funnels for more control in some areas, but also with time constraint, we weren't able to make any.
Our project was always going to be candy themed, because at the start of making our original schematics we suggested using candy. We wanted to incorporate an actual gum ball machine into the Rube Goldberg machine.
It took a lot of revising with trial and error to complete our machine, with the most errors coming from our pulley; which didn't successfully work once during the Rube Goldberg night. In addition, the screw was too thin to fit any actual-sized gum balls, so we had to get weighted metal balls (used when fishing), which seemed to work really well. The first screw we bought was too thick to bend into two loops.
Excluding the multiple times we were upset about how much progress we weren't completing the assignment, this project was fun and I really enjoyed it.
First, to activate the machine you put a quarter into the gumball machine at the top. The gumball then rolls down an inclined plane and into the pulley. The pulley lowers and hits the big jawbreaker. The jawbreaker rolls down another inclined plane and into a lever. On the other side of the lever are the weighted metal balls. When the jawbreaker drops into the lever, the metal balls roll into a hole and drop onto the fulcrum of the lever. They then go into the screw and hit the wheel and axle on the other end of the screw. The metal balls have just enough force to make the wheel and axle hit the second gumball that was sitting near the wheel and axle. The gumball then rolls down a series of inclined planes and into a bowl of candy. Voila!
Some of the differences between our first concept and our present concept is that initially the screw was going to be right at the beginning of this assignment, following directly after the gum ball left the gum ball machine. Also, instead of using spoons we intended to create a water-wheel like design. Since we were running out of time we had to adjust some ideas and make them easier to construct. Two days before the project was due, we placed 3 inclined planes at the bottom of our project, because we needed 3 more steps and the gum ball would bounce out of the bowl. We had ideas of using multiple funnels for more control in some areas, but also with time constraint, we weren't able to make any.
Our project was always going to be candy themed, because at the start of making our original schematics we suggested using candy. We wanted to incorporate an actual gum ball machine into the Rube Goldberg machine.
It took a lot of revising with trial and error to complete our machine, with the most errors coming from our pulley; which didn't successfully work once during the Rube Goldberg night. In addition, the screw was too thin to fit any actual-sized gum balls, so we had to get weighted metal balls (used when fishing), which seemed to work really well. The first screw we bought was too thick to bend into two loops.
Excluding the multiple times we were upset about how much progress we weren't completing the assignment, this project was fun and I really enjoyed it.
First, to activate the machine you put a quarter into the gumball machine at the top. The gumball then rolls down an inclined plane and into the pulley. The pulley lowers and hits the big jawbreaker. The jawbreaker rolls down another inclined plane and into a lever. On the other side of the lever are the weighted metal balls. When the jawbreaker drops into the lever, the metal balls roll into a hole and drop onto the fulcrum of the lever. They then go into the screw and hit the wheel and axle on the other end of the screw. The metal balls have just enough force to make the wheel and axle hit the second gumball that was sitting near the wheel and axle. The gumball then rolls down a series of inclined planes and into a bowl of candy. Voila!
It was really fun to work on this project. A lot of things went well but some things in the project could have been better. For example we could have used a different design to make the pulley work more efficiently. We also could have moved the jaw breaker to a spot on the machine where we knew it would work and fit in with the overall design. But the machine itself worked great. I liked how my group got creative and used actual gumballs to move about the machine. We also got creative with the painting. I found some new skills with in myself as well. I found out that I could actually use power tools fairly well without causing destruction to everything around me. I also found out that I could spray paint pretty decently too. Overall the Rube Goldberg project made us think and be creative! This was a great project to start off the year!