Rube Goldberg Machine |
This was our first project in STEM and it was a blast. We spent six weeks learning basic physics; things like force, work, mechanical advantage, energy, acceleration, and more. For this project, I was in a group with Brandon Fields, Noah Gersh, and Jordan Halpern, for the duration of this project and I had a lot of fun working with them.
Our Project
Our projects end goal was to activate an iPhone to sound the famous Wilhelm scream used in almost every movie. To start our project we dropped our purple marble onto two inclined planes then it ran into a chain of dominoes. The dominoes then knock into a class three lever that caused our wheel and axle to begin spinning. When the wheel and axle reached the bottom it collided with the small marble at the top of our screw. After falling down the screw the marble would knock out a 50g weight yanking down on one of the strings from our pulley causing the other to rise as the lever is pulled up on one end it pushes down on the sewing thread with a utility blade (wedge) cutting the string allowing the attached car, with a carrot on top, to roll down the inclined plane into Noah's phone at the bottom.
Physics We Learned
Force:
This is a push or pull on an object. It is the mass of an object (m) x said objects acceleration (a) as defined by newton's third law. In our project we found the force of the blade cutting the string in step 9 to be 0.25 N.
Work:
Work is the force on an object done over a certain distance.
Speed/Velocity:
This is a measure of how fast an object is moving. Velocity is similar to speed but is in a certain direction. Every moving object in our project had speed and velocity.
Mechanical Advantage (MA):
Mechanical advantage is a measure of how much easier a simple machine makes a task, how much it reduces the force. We used mechanical advantage for a lot of our calculations one of which was our first inclined plane which had a mechanical advantage of about 2.43.
Potential Energy (PE):
This is the stored energy of an object in a certain potential. We calculated the remaining potential energy after our hammer swung to be 0.0882 J.
Kinetic energy (KE):
This is how much energy an object has because of its motion. Our car had .074 J of KE right before it hit the phone.
Impulse:
Impulse is the amount of force applied for a given amount of time. We calculated the impulse of the spinning wheel on our marble to be 22.67 N/s.
Momentum:
Momentum is how much energy (umph) a moving object carries with it. Momentum is equal to impulse. Our wheel and axel didn't have enough momentum so we added weights to it.
Acceleration:
A change in an object's speed. A domino has an acceleration of 8.875 m/s/s before it hits another domino.
This is a push or pull on an object. It is the mass of an object (m) x said objects acceleration (a) as defined by newton's third law. In our project we found the force of the blade cutting the string in step 9 to be 0.25 N.
Work:
Work is the force on an object done over a certain distance.
Speed/Velocity:
This is a measure of how fast an object is moving. Velocity is similar to speed but is in a certain direction. Every moving object in our project had speed and velocity.
Mechanical Advantage (MA):
Mechanical advantage is a measure of how much easier a simple machine makes a task, how much it reduces the force. We used mechanical advantage for a lot of our calculations one of which was our first inclined plane which had a mechanical advantage of about 2.43.
Potential Energy (PE):
This is the stored energy of an object in a certain potential. We calculated the remaining potential energy after our hammer swung to be 0.0882 J.
Kinetic energy (KE):
This is how much energy an object has because of its motion. Our car had .074 J of KE right before it hit the phone.
Impulse:
Impulse is the amount of force applied for a given amount of time. We calculated the impulse of the spinning wheel on our marble to be 22.67 N/s.
Momentum:
Momentum is how much energy (umph) a moving object carries with it. Momentum is equal to impulse. Our wheel and axel didn't have enough momentum so we added weights to it.
Acceleration:
A change in an object's speed. A domino has an acceleration of 8.875 m/s/s before it hits another domino.
Reflection
Throughout this project I learned a few things about myself, both good and bad. In the beginning of the six weeks I had a lot of trouble working with Jordan, getting my ideas across to him, and getting work done with him, but after a while I learned how to teach him and how to accept his ideas and make a lot of compromises. I found that we could make and present an excellent presentation. I feel like we were clear and even though we ran long got out a TON of useful information. On the other hand I could have had been more polite to the other people in my group and worked with them making sure they were all on task. I feel that lot of the work was done by me and Jordan so we took a lot of opportunity away from Brandon and Noah. Next project I will definitely try to improve on these areas.