The Rube Goldberg Project
Standards for Rube Goldberg:
Day 1- The Beginning
Today, our group began researching Rube Goldberg and Newton Law's of Motion. As we read, we were wondering how Newton's Laws were useful for this project. However, when we continued our research, we began to realize that Newton's Laws is involved in every bit of it.
Things we researched:
Rube Goldberg
https://www.rubegoldberg.com/rube-the-artist/\
Balanced and Unbalanced Forces
https://www.physicsclassroom.com/class/newtlaws/Lesson-1/Balanced-and-Unbalanced-Forces
Newton's Laws of Motion
http://www.physics4kids.com/files/motion_laws.html
Things We learned
1. Rube was a cartoonist who used humor to solve simple tasks, using complex ways.
2. If an object is still or going at a constant speed, it is balanced. If an object is changing speed or direction, it is unbalanced.
3. Newton's First Law is the law of inertia. Basically, it means that everything will keep doing what it's doing in the same direction, unless an outside force acts upon it.
4. Newton's 2nd law says F=MA. It means that the bigger the force that comes upon an object, the faster and/or farther it will move. The distance and speed depend on the amount of force placed upon the object and the amount of inertia the object has.
5. Newton's 3rd law of motion says for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. It means that if I'm sitting in a chair, the chair is pushing against me with the same force. Also, if I roll a bowling ball into pins, the pins will be knocked down in the opposite direction, as the equal an opposite reaction to the ball hitting them.
Our successes:
It was fun learning about Rube and how Newton's laws applied to everyday life. Heather researched Rube Goldberg, Brian researched newton's 1st and 2nd law of motion, and Debbie researched newton's 3rd law.
Things we would do differently:
Brian was drawing instead of researching at one point, but then began to refocus on the project. It was a little loud in the classroom, so we went into the hallway to concentrate more. We also began to find videos of Rube Goldberg and got distracted by all the cool Rube videos.
Day 2- Sketch and Design
Today, we listed the simple machines we wanted to put in our machine. We also made a sketch of our Rube Goldberg machine. Brian drew the sketch and labelled it, while we all talked about what we wanted to do and made changes along the way.
Things we completed:
Listing 4 simple machines for our Rube Goldberg
Listing the 4 unbalanced forces and the 2 balanced forces in our machine.
Drawing and labelling the sketch to go with it.
Making a list of materials we each would need to bring.
Things we learned:
Debbie's dad likes to work with wood, so she has some ramps she may be able to bring.
It's harder to make a pulley than we thought, so we may have to get something premade for that part or choose another simple machine.
Our Successes:
Getting this done
Things we would do differently:
Nothing
DAY 3- Construction and Trials
We began constructing our Rube Goldberg today. It was a lot of fun.
Things we completed: The starting point of our machine. Someone holds the marble and puts it through the pool noodle. We completed our layout and trials of our machine.
Our successes: With some tweaking, it worked.
Things we would do differently: We would put the wooden ramp higher. So we did :)
©2019: Start Your Engines- Emerson Smith, Madalyn Humphreys, Chiemelie Uwakwe and Anna Tomlinson
DAY FOUR- CONSTRUCTION CONTINUES
We were able to create the machine, having 4 unbalanced forces and 2 balanced forces and address Newton's 3 laws of motion involved.
The unbalanced forces were:
DAY FIVE- REFLECTION
As we ended our Rube Goldberg, the relationship between Force, Mass and speed is:
If the marble is pushed with a greater force, it will roll down the noodle faster, thus knocking down more dominoes. This is just one example. If we rolled the marble with too little force, it will stop at the bottom and the dominoes will not be knocked over.
We also learned that if two objects have the same mass, the one that gets hit with more force will go farther and faster than the other object with less force.
We really enjoyed the Rube Goldberg Machine Project and learning how Newton's Laws effect our lives all the time.
Citations:
Professor Butts and the Self-Operating Napkin (1931)
Start Your Engines(2019)- Emerson Smith, Madalyn Humphreys, Chiemelie Uwakwe and Anna Tomlinson
© 2018 - Rube Goldberg. All Rights Reserved.
© 1996-2020 The Physics Classroom, All rights reserved
©copyright 1997-2015 Andrew Rader Studios, All rights reserved.
Tomlinson (Facilitator)
8.P.2A.1 Plan and conduct controlled scientific investigations to test
how varying the
amount of force or mass of an object affects the motion (speed and
direction), shape, or orientation of an object.
8.P.2A.2 Develop and use
models to compare and
predict the resulting effect
of balanced and unbalanced
forces on an object’s motion in terms of magnitude and direction.
8.P.2A.3 Construct explanations for the relationship
between the mass
of an object
and the concept of inertia
(Newton’s First Law of Motion).
 |
| Professor Butts and the Self-Operating Napkin (1931) |
Today, our group began researching Rube Goldberg and Newton Law's of Motion. As we read, we were wondering how Newton's Laws were useful for this project. However, when we continued our research, we began to realize that Newton's Laws is involved in every bit of it.
Things we researched:
Rube Goldberg
https://www.rubegoldberg.com/rube-the-artist/\
Balanced and Unbalanced Forces
https://www.physicsclassroom.com/class/newtlaws/Lesson-1/Balanced-and-Unbalanced-Forces
Newton's Laws of Motion
http://www.physics4kids.com/files/motion_laws.html
Things We learned
1. Rube was a cartoonist who used humor to solve simple tasks, using complex ways.
2. If an object is still or going at a constant speed, it is balanced. If an object is changing speed or direction, it is unbalanced.
3. Newton's First Law is the law of inertia. Basically, it means that everything will keep doing what it's doing in the same direction, unless an outside force acts upon it.
4. Newton's 2nd law says F=MA. It means that the bigger the force that comes upon an object, the faster and/or farther it will move. The distance and speed depend on the amount of force placed upon the object and the amount of inertia the object has.
5. Newton's 3rd law of motion says for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. It means that if I'm sitting in a chair, the chair is pushing against me with the same force. Also, if I roll a bowling ball into pins, the pins will be knocked down in the opposite direction, as the equal an opposite reaction to the ball hitting them.
Our successes:
It was fun learning about Rube and how Newton's laws applied to everyday life. Heather researched Rube Goldberg, Brian researched newton's 1st and 2nd law of motion, and Debbie researched newton's 3rd law.
Things we would do differently:
Brian was drawing instead of researching at one point, but then began to refocus on the project. It was a little loud in the classroom, so we went into the hallway to concentrate more. We also began to find videos of Rube Goldberg and got distracted by all the cool Rube videos.
Day 2- Sketch and Design
Today, we listed the simple machines we wanted to put in our machine. We also made a sketch of our Rube Goldberg machine. Brian drew the sketch and labelled it, while we all talked about what we wanted to do and made changes along the way.
Things we completed:
Listing 4 simple machines for our Rube Goldberg
Listing the 4 unbalanced forces and the 2 balanced forces in our machine.
Drawing and labelling the sketch to go with it.
Making a list of materials we each would need to bring.
Things we learned:
Debbie's dad likes to work with wood, so she has some ramps she may be able to bring.
It's harder to make a pulley than we thought, so we may have to get something premade for that part or choose another simple machine.
Our Successes:
Getting this done
Things we would do differently:
Nothing
©2019Start Your Engines: - Emerson Smith, Madalyn Humphreys, Chiemelie Uwakwe and Anna Tomlinson
DAY 3- Construction and Trials
We began constructing our Rube Goldberg today. It was a lot of fun.
Things we completed: The starting point of our machine. Someone holds the marble and puts it through the pool noodle. We completed our layout and trials of our machine.
Our successes: With some tweaking, it worked.
Things we would do differently: We would put the wooden ramp higher. So we did :)
©2019: Start Your Engines- Emerson Smith, Madalyn Humphreys, Chiemelie Uwakwe and Anna Tomlinson
DAY FOUR- CONSTRUCTION CONTINUES
We were able to create the machine, having 4 unbalanced forces and 2 balanced forces and address Newton's 3 laws of motion involved.
The unbalanced forces were:
- When the marble rolls down the pool noodle because the marble was in motion.
- When one side of the lever goes down and the other side goes up
- When the dominoes hit each other and go in a line
- Finally when the car rolls down the ramp and passes the finish line
- When the dominoes were standing still, that would be balanced because they were not moving
- The ramp would be balanced because it didn’t move at all during the project, even when the car was rolling down it.
Newton's 1st law- An example of inertia would be when the car was still, and an outside force (the dominoes) hit the car and set it in motion down the ramp.
Newton's 2nd law- An example of Newton’s Second Law would be when we had to figure out how much force the dominoes needed to put on the car so it would move down the ramp. We had to move our dominoes around a few times, but eventually, we got it right by putting two dominoes side by side so that it would create a larger force. This allowed our car to roll off of the books and then roll on the ramp.
Newton's 3rd law- An example of Newton's Third Law would be when one side of the lever went down(which was the action) and the other side went up(which was the reaction), which caused the paper towel roll to fall on the dominoes.
As we ended our Rube Goldberg, the relationship between Force, Mass and speed is:
If the marble is pushed with a greater force, it will roll down the noodle faster, thus knocking down more dominoes. This is just one example. If we rolled the marble with too little force, it will stop at the bottom and the dominoes will not be knocked over.
We also learned that if two objects have the same mass, the one that gets hit with more force will go farther and faster than the other object with less force.
We really enjoyed the Rube Goldberg Machine Project and learning how Newton's Laws effect our lives all the time.
Citations:
Professor Butts and the Self-Operating Napkin (1931)
Start Your Engines(2019)- Emerson Smith, Madalyn Humphreys, Chiemelie Uwakwe and Anna Tomlinson
© 2018 - Rube Goldberg. All Rights Reserved.
© 1996-2020 The Physics Classroom, All rights reserved
©copyright 1997-2015 Andrew Rader Studios, All rights reserved.
Tomlinson (Facilitator)
I like the way that you have the blog separated out into days and students are doing the same thing each day, reflecting, showing their progress, etc. I think that trial and error is a huge part of Rube Goldberg machines and it is cool to see throughout the progress of their project. I did one of these in 11th grade Physics and I still remember working on it and all of the struggles, but it was so cool when we finally got it to work!
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