In contrast to some of the other design processes that we've used so far in the applied STEAM class, the Engineering Design Process as it relates to Rube Goldberg contraptions required my team and me to do far more trial runs and testing. Usually, the Engineering Design Process would be rather similar to other design processes. In fact, the Engineering Design Process has many overlapping steps and a similar outline with the process for product design: a design cycle that my classmates and I have individually experienced as we went through our product design project.
The Engineering Design Process starts with a problem, then calls for background research and specific requirements surrounding the problems at hand, and then a series of prototypes and testing, depending on how well the proposed solutions can solve the problem and meet the requirements. In this case and with Rube Goldberg specifically, our initial starting point isn't so much a problem, but rather a prompt. Our prompt was that at the end of our Rube Goldberg machine, we had to open a book.
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| (Source: sciencebuddies.org) |
At the beginning of our Rube Goldberg project, we were given certain parameters that we had to work with: we have to build a 15 step Rube Goldberg machine with at least one of each of the six simple machines while using the steps of the Engineering Design Process and completing the final goal of opening a book. My team and I started with bringing in everyday household objects and sharing them with each other to start brainstorming ideas of how we could build steps of our machine together.
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| (trying to put steps together from items my team and I had brought from home) |
Some simple machines were easier to build than others. For example, an inclined plane is relatively self-explanatory and this simple machine ended up being used as part of our first step with a golf ball rolling down a ramp. On the other hand, our machine for a wheel and axle was a bit finicky; we used dominos to crash into a sink drain stopper that was tilted on its axis, which occasionally wouldn't rotate the full 180 degrees in order to trigger the second set of dominos to fall. In the beginning and before realizing that the dominos had to be a certain distance from the drain stopper, the dominos often wouldn't even have enough force to move the drain stopper at all.
At some point well into our project, we still hadn't been able to come up with a step that was a simple machine for a screw. We consulted our teacher, Dr. Baralt, for her help and she advised us to use a slinky as a screw. We found a smaller metal slinky and wrapped it around a few wooden dowels in order to hold it upright and allow a glass marble to run through it, and eventually knock over a few stood-up flooring tiles.
Out of all the steps we designed, I think the screw with the slinky would have to be my favourite. Not only was it the most reliable step, but I also found it mesmerizing that we were able to adjust the speed of the marble coming out of the slinky. After running the slinky step a few times, we figured out that it needed some sort of support to keep the slinky positioned along the dowel in the same place each time. We ended up using a pencil secured by a rubber band to function as a support beam and by tweaking where we placed the pencil for support, we were able to change the angle of the slinky as a screw, and therefore the speed at which the marble came out of the slinky.
It was incredibly enjoyable to brainstorm ideas for our steps and test out different ways that we could run them. I also found it super fun to connect our simple machines with other steps and run certain sections of the full Rube Goldberg machine to make sure that they were functioning before we ran the full thing.
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| (our full list of steps) |
It got a little frustrating when we would try to run our machine and by the 3rd or 4th step, something would go awry. This meant that we would have to re-tie the string that was being cut by the scissors as part of our wedge simple machine. Even though Grace was usually the one that would have to re-tie the string, I felt her frustration when I had to run the project again and I had to re-tie it. That definitely would have to be my least favourite part.
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| (Grace patiently fixing our string for the up-teenth time) |
I think a really important lesson to take from this project is that there are multiple ways to solve a problem. Maybe the best example of that is the fact that both our team of Yvonne, Grace, and I, and the boys' team of Tyler, Theo, and Nicklaus both had the same prompt: to create a Rube Goldberg machine worth at least 15 steps to open a book. Despite having the same assignment, our projects still came out different all the while both filling the given requirements and accomplishing the end goal. I'd also argue that I've had the opportunity to work on my quick thinking skills with this project, given that we had issues and bumps in the road come up along the way, and we had to think and work under a time crunch to solve them.
Speaking of skills developed, we never would've been able to complete this project if we didn't implement elements of critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and communication. I'm tempted to say that this project took a great deal of creativity, and though it did, it took a great deal of critical thinking, collaboration, and communication as well. For example, in the beginning, we used mostly collaboration and creativity to get a jump-start on our project. We tried brainstorming and bouncing ideas off of each other to see if anything was feasible as a starting point. As we got further into our project, we needed more critical thinking and communication to be able to work individually on separate parts of the machine. It was crucially important to keep each other updated as we were building parts of the machine, while still making sure that we could all be working on something at the same time in an attempt to maximize the time frame that was given to us. Not to mention, critical thinking came into play as we had to consider which simple machines we had yet to include and how to implement them.
Below is our final video of our successful Rube Goldberg Machine:
At the end of the day, I think it's safe to say that our project wouldn't have been successful if we didn't work as a team. As they say,
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