Hello everyone and welcome back to another blog post. For the past little bit we have been working on a Scimatics project called metaphor machines. We had to make a Rube Goldberg machine that included a parallel and electrical circuit. I really like this project because at the beginning I knew nothing about circuits or Rube Goldberg machines. You can see my growth as a learner
in my project MindMap. 

As usual, we started off this project with a MindMap. I think this was a really good way to start off the project because we could see how much about electricity that we already knew. After doing this, we were able to see that we had a lot left to learn. You can see my MindMap below ⬇️ 

Next up we did a small experiment with Rube Goldberg machines. It was called Junkyard wars. We got given a bunch of random supplies and we were asked to create a Rube Goldberg machine. This was a fun little activity because we were introduced to the process of making a Rube Goldberg machine. You can check out what we made below ⬇️ 

Next up we did an electricity lab. This was really important because it’s where we first applied our knowledge of wiring and electric circuits. We had certain patterns we had to set up our experiment. This was a very important piece of building knowledge because it taught us about residence and the cause that having more wires has on the entire circuit. Here are some pictures from that ⬇️ 

After that we did a bunch of building knowledge through workbooks
which was pretty boring so I wont get into that. However, after that we started on build our personal blue prints for what we wanted to be in our final Rube Goldberg machine. This was a group project but up until this point it had all ben individual. You can check out my personal blueprint below ⬇️ 

After that, all of us (Teva, me and Brooke) collaborated and combined all of our personal blueprints into one big final one. I think that this was a really good way to se what other people that drawn given the same creative constraints. I think that we did a really good job on the final diagram because we combined all our brainpower into creating one big awesome one. You can check it out below ⬇️ 

 

And finally, we built our Rube Goldberg machine. Over 2 classes we gathered a bunch of materials and a lot of hot glue (Mr. Gross if you’re reading this, more than 3 glue sticks were needed). Anyways, we spent a lot of time thinking about the best way to portray the scientific theory through a Rube Goldberg machine. In the end I’m really proud of our final product. You can check out the video we made below ⬇️ 

Curricular Competencies:

Questioning and predicting:

I think I did decent on this competency. Even though I was working with my good friends and I had good friends sitting around me, I was still very productive. I think that I could have done better on this by really making sure I was maximizing my class time work, but overall I really think that I did a pretty good job managing my time.

Reasoning and analyzing:

For this I feel like we as a group did pretty well. We all collaborated and made a very snazzy looking final diagram. We have accurate measurements of the current, resistance, and voltage. We had supplies all labeled on the side. We had our final wiring mapped out. We had all the things that we had in our final board accurately measured out to scale.

Planning and conducting:

We spent a lot of both classes that were dedicated to building working on the circuitry of our Rube Goldberg machine. We spent a lot of time measuring wires, creating switches, and placing them in certain spots where we knew the ball would turn them on. After the first attempt at making the circuitry failing miserably in the first building class, we learned from our mistakes and make everything work for filming in the second one. We had accurate and really nicely drawn diagrams that were labeled with the correct voltage, resistance, and current.

Scientific communication:

I think that we had a very cool video. We had different shots and angles of our machine working. With the video style, we were able to highlight different parts of the machine that we were really proud of. We also evenly divided up the talking for explaining the scientific method.

In the end, this project was super fun and interesting. I got to work with some of my really good friends and learn about something that I had no clue about. I feel like I learned a lot and that I gained so much knowledge that will be very useful for further projects.

Best wishes,

-Dana