Well, my first task for STEM is to create a Rube Goldberg machine with three other assigned people in my class.
Yay.
And it was actually pretty fun and successful. We had a lot of fun making it.
Project: Kool-Aid was made to help the people that just didn't know how to make Kool-Aid but did know how to set up the most complicated machine on earth that could MAKE Kool-Aid. Oh, they also had to know how to fill a glass of water and mix sugar into it. As well as open up the packet of Kool-Aid and dump it into a spoon carefully with just the right amount. So I guess this machine only really works on people that don't know how to dump contents of a packet into a glass of water.
But hey, the idea of a Rube Goldberg machine is to set up the most complicated series of tasks just to do one really simple task. So we were successful.
First of all, I will show you the machine in action. Because if you don't actually see the real thing you won't believe us.
Yay.
And it was actually pretty fun and successful. We had a lot of fun making it.
Project: Kool-Aid was made to help the people that just didn't know how to make Kool-Aid but did know how to set up the most complicated machine on earth that could MAKE Kool-Aid. Oh, they also had to know how to fill a glass of water and mix sugar into it. As well as open up the packet of Kool-Aid and dump it into a spoon carefully with just the right amount. So I guess this machine only really works on people that don't know how to dump contents of a packet into a glass of water.
But hey, the idea of a Rube Goldberg machine is to set up the most complicated series of tasks just to do one really simple task. So we were successful.
First of all, I will show you the machine in action. Because if you don't actually see the real thing you won't believe us.
But just to slow down, I will explain everything carefully (sometimes with a dramatic voice). Starting out with pulling a simple string. This string seems at first to have no purpose in life. But NO, this string is the key to staying hydrated with a drink that seems like the #1 thing you would NOT want hyperactive children to have. The string is connected to a pulley that has a mechanical advantage of 1 (in simple terms, that means it is basically pointless but just cool to start a Rube Goldberg machine with) , which is connected to a wall. When you pull on the string with a force of 0.5 Newtons, the wall lifts up and a marble that was stopped by the wall can now move down the inclined plane that it is on. While on the inclined plane, the marble accelerates at 1.176 meters/second^2 and then goes into the corkscrew, which is made out of a PVC pipe. The screw ends up having a mechanical advantage of 7.8, which is figured out by dividing the distance traveled by the height traveled. Afterwards the marble hits something that is leaning on the edge of the PVC pipe. It is a weight that weighs 10 grams. The marble knocks off the weight with 0.015 Joules of kinetic energy and hopes that it can now continue its journey, but no, its work here is done, and there is no point for it to continue. The weight is actually connected to a pulley (again with a mechanical advantage of 1) and there is something else on the other side of the pulley. It is ANOTHER weight, but this one only weighs 5 grams, so when the 10 gram weight falls down, the other gets lifted up. When it is, it hits a paper cup with a little tab sticking out of it with a force of 0.05 Newtons. Inside of the cup is a marble that slowly moves out of the cup. Next it falls down a tube into a Pachinko-like area. (If you don't know what Pachinko is, think Japanese pinball machines without any flippers.) It bounces off 3 different ramps and then lands on a piece of sloped cardboard at the bottom, which guides it to a third tube. At the end of that tube is a wheel and axle with 2 spoons as axles. One spoon sticks up, and the other one is above the cup of sugary water and holds the most important thing of all...the Kool-Aid mix. As the marble comes out of the tube, it hits the spoon and transfers its kinetic energy of 0.00864 Joules to the spoon, thus moving the wheel and axle and dumping a sometimes small, sometimes generous, or sometimes, WELL OVER generous amount of Kool-Aid into the cup. Congrats! You now have a drink that will put you on a sugar high for a VERY LONG TIME.
If that long paragraph seemed like a lot for you to handle, IMAGINE HOW IT WAS DESIGNING AND BUILDING THE PROJECT WITH PEOPLE YOU PROBABLY DIDN'T CARE ABOUT BEFORE. We had a lot of problems and had to cut corners a lot. We were really close (in fact, kind of even passed) the deadline we were assigned. Such as the fact that the marble kept bouncing off of the inclined planes in the Pachinko area. We had to install a bunch of walls so the marble wouldn't fall off; however it still does to this day. The part where the weight hits the cup wasn't always working. Until the idea of a tab on the bottom of the cup was brought up, we just relied on putting the cup on the very edge of its platform and hoping that the weight would hit it. Now it works 100% (or at least 99.99% considering that one time the weight somehow made the cup fall backwards). Sometimes the marble wouldn't make too good of a transition between the first inclined plane and the corkscrew, so we installed 2 little wood blocks to sort of act as a funnel and lead the marble into the screw. Other problems include a kink in the corkscrew and numerous changes.
This project really helped me to communicate with others better. It also helped me with my presentation skills. For both of those, I still have a lot of things to improve on and I also can improve on other things, such as coming up with better ideas. I swear that we spent a few days just wondering how our machine was going to end. One more thing I need to work on is consistently updating something, such as this website here. This project was around a month long but I only updated the website three times. If you seriously want to see them, click on the button below.
If that long paragraph seemed like a lot for you to handle, IMAGINE HOW IT WAS DESIGNING AND BUILDING THE PROJECT WITH PEOPLE YOU PROBABLY DIDN'T CARE ABOUT BEFORE. We had a lot of problems and had to cut corners a lot. We were really close (in fact, kind of even passed) the deadline we were assigned. Such as the fact that the marble kept bouncing off of the inclined planes in the Pachinko area. We had to install a bunch of walls so the marble wouldn't fall off; however it still does to this day. The part where the weight hits the cup wasn't always working. Until the idea of a tab on the bottom of the cup was brought up, we just relied on putting the cup on the very edge of its platform and hoping that the weight would hit it. Now it works 100% (or at least 99.99% considering that one time the weight somehow made the cup fall backwards). Sometimes the marble wouldn't make too good of a transition between the first inclined plane and the corkscrew, so we installed 2 little wood blocks to sort of act as a funnel and lead the marble into the screw. Other problems include a kink in the corkscrew and numerous changes.
This project really helped me to communicate with others better. It also helped me with my presentation skills. For both of those, I still have a lot of things to improve on and I also can improve on other things, such as coming up with better ideas. I swear that we spent a few days just wondering how our machine was going to end. One more thing I need to work on is consistently updating something, such as this website here. This project was around a month long but I only updated the website three times. If you seriously want to see them, click on the button below.