Above you will see my Rube Goldberg Project. A Rube Goldberg machine is a machine designed to make a simple task complicated. In my case, the task was to feed a fish. It starts off with little airsoft pellets rolling down an inclined plane, into a hole attached to a screw. The small balls roll down the screw onto a very slight inclined plane. At the end of the second inclined plane they fall through a hole into a cup. That cup is attached to a pulley. The weight of the pellets build up and trigger the pulley. The cup lowers, starting to lift a lever on the other end of the pulley. On the other side of the lever sits a golf ball. Since the lever is lifting on the left side, the right side where the golf ball is starts to tilt down towards the bottom. The golf ball rolls off the lever onto a slight inclined plane, and pushes a cup full of weight off the end of the inclined plane. The cup of weights are attatched to a pulley. Because the cup falls, it pulls a piece of wood up. That piece of wood was blocking a small wiffel ball that rolls down another inclined plane, and pushes a wedge under a cup full of fish food. This pushes it just enough for a little bit of food to fall off. The fish food falls into a sequence of three inclined planes into the fish bowl. Finally, the fish is happy!
Concepts:
FORCE: Strength or energy due to physical movement or action
MECHANICAL ADVANTAGE: The ratio of the force exerted by a machine to the force applied to it
ACCELERATION: An increase of the rate or speed of something
POTENTIAL ENERGY: The stored energy of an object due to its position
KINETIC ENERGY: The energy of motion in an object
WORK: When any force is put on to an object, causing displacement of the object
Simple Machines:
LEVER: a bar that rests on a fulcrum, used to help move a heavy load with one end when force is exerted to the other
PULLEY: a wheel through which a cord passes on its rim. It acts to change the direction of a force applied to the cord, mainly used to raise heavy objects or weights.
INCLINED PLANE: a sloped ramp which heavy loads can be easily transported.
WEDGE: a piece of material that gets thinner from one end to the other, that is driven between two objects or a part of one object to separate or fasten them.
SCREW: an inclined plane wrapped around a visible or imaginary pole.
Throughout the building process, we realized we needed to tweak our original design. Certain aspects went very well but a couple went poorly. Originally, we had the pellets come straight from the screw onto the lever. After building the lever and putting the screw in position, we realized that there was not enough space for the lever on the bottom, we needed more height. We brainstormed for awhile and finally agreed that a pulley would be the best simple machine to add height. An aspect that went well was the last steps. Starting from when the golf ball hit the cup of weights off the inclined plane to the fish being fed. This went well because as a team we made sure each step was perfected before me moved on to the next. From this experience I have learned a lot not just about facts and content, but about myself. One thing I found about myself was that in situations where we are running out of time, I can keep things calm so people do not stress. For example, closer to the end of the time we had, we did not have the whole second half of the project done. I planned a time for everyone to come over to my house and finish the project to reduce the stress in class. Personally, I think I could have done a couple things better. Also, I believe that this project improved my power tool usage. One huge thing was to concentrate on what we are doing more. Instead of doing a whole bunch of things at once, I could have focused on one thing at a time. Also, I could have been a little more careful when using tools or working on the project. In the future, I will work on these characteristics.