Whats good jit.
Today we will discuss my most recent project, Metaphor Machines. This was probably the project where we spent the most time physically building our final product.
What we made was a Rube Goldberg machine that incorporated electricity in it. What my group ended up making was a series of ramps, trapdoors, levers, electrical circuits, tunnels and lightbulbs.
We pretty much learned what a Rube Goldberg machine was on the very first day of this project. What we did to learn what it was is we were given a limited amount of materials, watched some videos for inspiration, and worked in groups to make a machine with at least 4 mechanisms.
However learning how the electrical parts worked was the hard part and pretty much the academic part of this project. As usual, we read and filled out textbook pages and questions which helped us learn the different concepts. Things we learned about in the textbook pages were how electricity moves, what circuits are, how circuits work, the different aspects of a circuit, and what sources were.
Once we learned what we needed to know about how electricity moves and how electrical circuits work, we started to plan out how our machine was gonna work. Some groups decided to watch some videos for inspiration, others chose not to. My group didn’t watch anything because I already knew what we were going to do because I used to watch these machines through videos with my grandpa all the time.
The people I worked with in this project were, Cole, Sylas, and Max and together we started to map out what our machine was going to look like. At first we all made our own designs and ideas which led to making 1 proper design with ideas that everyone contributed.
As soon as that blueprint was approved, we had to make a physical blueprint using construction paper and the [proper measurements so that building our machine would be easier to build. Once we we finished it looked really good in person but bozo Cole and Max decided to get pastel pink construction paper so when we took photos of it, its almost impossible to see our plan.
Building to awhile longer than we expected because as some of you already know, teenagers get distracted very easily. Even though the first half of the machine took too long, the second half was built rather quickly. We managed to use many functions like ramps, tunnels, light switches, and a trapdoor.
Our machine actually looked pretty great before we added all the wiring and lights. That’s when it all kinda fell apart. We didn’t actually realize how many wires we would be using on our board when we were designing our blueprints until we started attaching them to the switches. We went from an actual good looking Rube Goldberg machine to the inside of an electrical box. Even though it looked pretty ugly, the actual marble run was smooth and the lights made it look nicer.
Curricular Competencies
Questioning and Predicting
This competency involves demonstrating a sustained intellectual curiosity about a scientific topic or problem of personal interest.
My group and I managed to achieve a proficient level of understanding by using all our class time efficiently so that we could finish the project on time because we know how valuable our class time is.
Reasoning and Analyzing
This competency is simply just estimating reasonably.
Like I said before my group made complete and accurate blueprints that originally showed a grid scale. All of our measurements were labeled accurately and all lines were easily distinguished.
Planning and Conducting
To achieve a proficient level of understanding for this competency we had to select and use appropriate equipment like digital technologies to systematically and accurately collect and record our data. The reasons why we got a proficient grade on this project were because of our ability to build series and Parallel circuits used to great effect with efficiency in our “Metaphor Machine”. Our circuit diagrams were accurately included in our final blueprint and our diagrams were neat and easy to understand.
Scientific Communication
To have had all 4 competencies completed we were to formulate physical or mental models to describe a phenomenon. Our video recorded the entire marble run through our Rube Goldberg machine in slow motion. However my group mate Sylas did not record the voice over as he said he would.
In the end I had fun working as a group to create a Rube Goldberg machine even though we ended up missing a few requirements. I believe I learned a lot from this project that hopefully I will use in the future but for now might not be so necessary.
Jit out.