Post 11 - EIT - Rube Golberg

Rube Goldberg Machine

This project was a group project, I was in a group of three with Joey and Lance. The goal of this project was simply to pop a balloon. It had to be in the style of a Rube Goldberg machine. This involved at least six steps of energy transfer step, without human assistance, only energy from the last step.

The technological concepts in this projects was the idea of kinetic energy and energy transfer. There was many ways for the kinetic energy to be made and the energy to be transferred between steps. We chose to use falling/rolling balls, a pulley system, and a bouncing ball making a wood piece fall.

My learning goals for this project were to further understand the uses of kinetic energy, potential energy, and energy transfer, as well as learning to adapt to what a first attempt presents me, and how to correct it if needed.

Our project had nine steps in total. Firstly a roll of quarters rolls down a wooden ramp and falls into a cup. The cup is connected to a pulley system which pulled up another cup on the other side. This second cup hit a wooden ramp balanced to where it is hit the marbles roll out. The marbles roll down a track and then onto a piece of wood on a dowel rod, which when hit releases a small wood block holding a bouncy ball on a ramp. The bouncy ball then rolls down onto two pieces of wood shaped like a V, which it bounces down then hits the wooden block with nails on which falls and pops the balloon below.

The feedback for our project was mainly all good. When tested the project worked fully at around 65% when finally finished. We were very happy with how the final project came out and how well it worked.

If we were to redesign the project then I would try and add a couple more complex steps, as ours were relatively simple. I would also add a proper theme so that it looks nicer and has a theme.

There were a lot of technological resources in this project. We could use pretty much for the project. We stuck to a pretty basic resource pool. We used wood, cups, balls, marbles, and string. The wood was used for building basically every part of the project. The cups, balls, marbles, and string were all used as or in the steps.

Our biggest challenge was getting the wooden block to fall and pop the balloon. The other steps were relatively easy to get to work almost every time. The wooden block, however, was a lot more difficult. We had to play with the overall weight of the wood, the angle, distance of fall, and length of nails. This alone took us over a week to perfect.

I learned two things from this project. I learnt both how to utilize potential energy and energy transfer, and how to really solve a problem through using different methods and techniques.