This project was all about learning the six simple machines and how we can use those and more in creative ways to make a machine to apply a band-aid. We learned how we can use everyday things around us to make something useful. 

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           In this project we were separated into two groups to build our own rube Goldberg. These are some things my group used in our rube. My first step of the Rube was a pulley, lever, and inclined plane. The step was that a ball would fall into a cup which triggered a pulley with tilted a piece of wood so a ball would roll down a tube. There was potential energy when a ball sat still on a piece of wood. When the wood piece would be tilted up the ball would roll into the tube. There was kinetic energy when the ball rolled down the tube flipping a switch. We used inertia in a step where there was a cup under a hole waiting for a marble to fall in it.

 

             For this part, we were asked to find and calculate the potential and kinetic energy for the situation if a 7.0 gram steel ball that is 50 centimeters dropped at the beginning step of a rube. And these were the calculations I got.

 

Potential Energy = mass times gravity times height

Mass = 0.0007 kg     Gravity = 9.81 m/s2    Height = 0.5m

0.0007 * 9.81 m/s^2 * 0.5m = 0.0343 J

 

Kinetic energy = ½ m (v2)

Mass = 0.007hg   Velocity = 0.45 m/s2

½ * 0.0007 * 0.45m/s^2 = 0.00070875 J

           To design our rube we gave different people different jobs to accomplish then we put it all together. I think in this project my greatest strength was critical thinking. I was able to make my steps interesting and simple when I needed to. I grew the most in communication with talking with my group especially when one of our group members was gone for about a month and we couldn’t put his step on. I was able to communicate what we needed to do to skip his step and go onto mine.

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