Rube Goldberg
This was the first project I did in STEM, and it doubled as an introduction to the six simple machines and how they each work, along with concepts like Mechanical Advantage, Velocity, Acceleration, Potential Energy, Kinetic Energy, Force, and Work. The point of a Rube Goldberg machine to excessively over complicate what would otherwise be a simple action. The goal of my group's machine was to nail the final nail into a house. We were in groups of four, and the other people in my group were Matt, Howie, and Sage. You can go and check out their websites too.
We had three days to plan out a theme, and a general idea for the structure of our machine. Everyone was given a 4 ft x 4 ft plywood board, and access to screws, nails, wood, drills, etc.. After those three days, we had nine days to actually go through and build the actual project. Finally, we had three days at the end to prep our presentation, which we gave at the big night that you might have been at. During the build process, there were frequent problems we hadn't foreseen, so we were forced to figure out solutions for them, which often involved changing the way our project flowed. This resulted in two different blueprints, one that we made on the first day, before building anything, and a final one, which was created directly from what our actual machine looked like in the end. Some big changes were that our screw needed to completely differently from what we had originally thought of, and the fact that our original system for a door at the end was unrealistic. You can see these changes in the video below.
We had three days to plan out a theme, and a general idea for the structure of our machine. Everyone was given a 4 ft x 4 ft plywood board, and access to screws, nails, wood, drills, etc.. After those three days, we had nine days to actually go through and build the actual project. Finally, we had three days at the end to prep our presentation, which we gave at the big night that you might have been at. During the build process, there were frequent problems we hadn't foreseen, so we were forced to figure out solutions for them, which often involved changing the way our project flowed. This resulted in two different blueprints, one that we made on the first day, before building anything, and a final one, which was created directly from what our actual machine looked like in the end. Some big changes were that our screw needed to completely differently from what we had originally thought of, and the fact that our original system for a door at the end was unrealistic. You can see these changes in the video below.