🌲How can we Represent the Scientific Method?🌲
🌲What Factors Affect the Function and Efficiency of Electric Circuits?🌲
🌲Hello and welcome back to the forest of learning! In this post, I will be reflecting on the process of creating a Rube Goldberg machine. This machine is created to be a metaphor for the Scientific Method. Our machine will include parallel and series electrical circuits as well as six or more different mechanisms that represent the six steps of the Scientific Method. In addition to creating our machine, we must also create a scaled blueprint to go along with it! This was a group project that I completed alongside two lovely humans; Brooke and Dana (you should go check out their blog’s!). This was a really fun project and if you are interested in learning more about our Metaphor Machine, keep reading!🌲
Before I get into reflecting, you might want a little reminder on what the Scientific Method is. The Scientific method is an approach to seeking knowledge that involves forming and testing a hypothesis. The scientific method is used for most experiments within science and other fields. These are the six steps of the scientific method:
You also might be wondering, what exactly a “Metaphor Machine” really is. Well, as I mentioned earlier, this machine is a Rube Goldberg machine. A Rube Goldberg machine is a contraption that uses a chain reaction to carry out a simple task. It’s pretty entertaining to watch and even more to build! I find these machines are especially wonderful at bringing out the creative side of yourself using technical skills.
I have some history with these types of machines; since I was little, I have always been fascinated with the concept of dominos and card towers and rubik’s cubes- things that would confuse me and sometimes frustrate me at times. I found that creating weird contraptions and inventions was just so fascinating. I remember creating small little ‘machines’ of sorts around the house when I was bored, and always building things in my kindergarten classroom during play time. I was really interested in making things when I was little, so it was pretty fun to reminisce about that throughout the project. I am by no means an engineer, and, I feel that I don’t have enough patience or skill to continue fuelling this interest, but I still I feel like this project was a fun way for me to feel like a kid again and I really enjoyed it.
Now, with that out of the way, let’s get into the project!
As always, we followed the project path throughout the course of the project:
To start this project off and spark our interest in the topics we will be reviewing, we participated in the activity “Junkyard Wars”. This activity was a lighthearted competition to create the best Rube Goldberg machine with the most mechanisms using only materials in the classroom. We had about 45 minutes to plan, create, and film our machine. I found this to be really fun since I really enjoyed how Dana and Brooke and I were able to work together and have fun collaborating. We didn’t end up making it spectacular, but as a group we still enjoyed making it! I also felt that the other groups in our class did a wonderful job creating theirs! It was really awesome being able to see all of the video at the end of class.
In that same class, we also got started on our project start MindMap. To do this, we first asked questions about the project as a group, and then individually created our own mind map. In this mindmap, we accumulated all of our previous knowledge on electrical circuits and machines as well as any questions we had about the project. I didn’t have much of an understanding about electrical circuits yet, so, it was definitely a shorter mindmap compared to mindmaps I have completed previously in Scimatics. I feel that I was able to represent a sophisticated level of understanding with the competency “Questioning and Predicting” here because I was able to exemplify a sustained curiosity for the scientific topics in this project while making connections to my previous understandings as well.
Speaking of not understanding much about electrical circuits, the next phase of the project was to learn about them! To do this, we read and completed three textbooks and workbooks about the topic. This allowed us to have an idea of how we could incorporate and build electrical circuits into our machine safely and correctly. When learning about circuits, we often used this circuit construction website to visualize our learning.
During this phase of the project, we also completed our second milestone of the project; electricity labs. In this milestone, we worked with our group to answer three questions through using the scientififc method. In the labs, we were able to use real electricity and create circuit diagrams, use formulas, and apply our overall understanding of electricity to the real world!
These experiments allowed us to solidify the knowledge we would apply to our machine later, so, I found it to be a very valuable activity to learn from! I found that in this milestone I was able to demonstrate a sophisticated level of understanding for the competency “Planning and Conducting” as I was able to use appropriate equipment to systematically collect and record data using the scientific method.
The next portion of the project was to build an understanding of how we can design our blueprint for the machine. To do this, we learned about scale diagrams and how to convert real-world things to scale on paper (when I say paper, I mean iPad) through using math. To learn this, we used Khan academy. As I have mentioned in previous posts, I don’t learn best from Khan academy so it was a bit difficult for me to understand how to scale things from the videos. Luckily, I already knew the basics of how to turn things to scale, however, I believe, without a previous understanding of how to scale, I would have probably been completely lost during this portion since I feel that the videos did not do a great job at explaining the concept. Overall, this did allow us to feel more prepared when it came to our designing process though, so, it was still valuable.
Before we actually start building, we need to plan and design! To do this, we each created an individual blueprint/plan of our machine to pitch to our fellow group members. This blueprint would include the circuit plan + diagram, a grid scale, a colour coded legend for different materials, and of course the plan for each metaphor/mechanism in our machine.
I originally wanted to make this whole elaborate plan with complex contraptions that would be this masterpiece of a machine. I knew how to do it so I got really caught up in that fantasy of a complex machine that would be fun to work on. But, then, I took a step back and remembered that I told myself I would not put too much work on myself this project. You see, lately I have been putting myself under a lot of unnecessary pressure and stress and I knew that it would already be a challenge to make the electrical circuits, so, I decided against making it the way I had originally wanted to. Do I regret this? I mean, yes and no. I am really glad that I didn’t make the design too crazy since I know that I would have definitely overworked myself to meet the deadline, however, I didn’t make the machine as interesting as I would have liked so I think it made me a little bit less invested in this project which resulted in a machine that I am not completely happy with.
Anyways, sorry for the side track- I ended up creating a blueprint which I was pretty content with. It’s not like it was really that great or anything, it was really just a plan that I figured we would probably be able to complete fairly easily. Also, since it was going to be pitched to our group members, there was no guarantee that we would actually end up using my design anyways, so it was okay that it wasn’t perfect. During this planning phase, I feel that I represented a sophisticated understanding of the competency “Reasoning and Analyzing” as I was able to plan and estimate how my final design could be applied to a real machine.
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Next, it was time to decide on our final design! These were Brooke and Dana’s plans:
Dana’s Individual Blueprint
Brooke’s Individual Blueprint
As a group we ended up combining our ideas to form this plan;
Before the building phase of this project, we actually had spring break right smack dab in the middle so it was a bit weird leaving for two weeks and then going right into creating it. But, even with that, before we physically started making things, we also made a full scale draft of our machine so that we could look at it while building;
Sorry, the pencil is a hard to see in this photo!
So, after that was created, it was time to build! This for me was the most fun part. I really enjoyed bringing our plan to life! After bringing the materials, the rest was pretty much just trial and error. I feel like there really isn’t much to say about building, we just kind of did it..
Four classes later, we were done building, and it was now time for our final step, which was creating the video!
At the very end of this project, we added onto our mindmap from the beginning and created our project end mindmap to solidify and add our knowledge!
🌲Overall, this was a really cool project! In this project, I found that I was able to work on being aware of how I was feeling mentally and worked around that rather than what I usually do which is the opposite. Focussing on how I was feeling allowed me to not necessarily surpass my personal expectations, but meet them without feeling to drained by the end- which, for me, is a huge win. I enjoyed working alongside my two group members Brooke and Dana, and found that I was able to collaborate with them well throughout the project. I am happy with the overall understandings that I have built and I feel that this project allowed me to stay in my comfort zone while still learning a lot. So, How can we represent the scientific method? Well, we can represent the scientific method through creating a Rube Goldberg machine that includes mechanisms that represent a metaphor for each step in the scientific method. And, What factors affect the function and efficiency of electric circuits? Well, there are many factors such as the voltage which affects the electric current of the circuit, the amount of resistance that is in the circuit, and outside affects as well such as your lightbulb being burned out before testing or the steadiness of the hands testing it! There are many factors that could affect your circuit, but most of those issues can be solved through understanding current, voltage, and resistance. I had a fun in this project and, as always, I hope you enjoyed watching me grow in the forest of🌲
🌲learning🌲
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