What we did leading up to the winter exhibition

In preparation for our winter exhibition, we had to first learn a few things that I will go over very quickly. First of which was Crane Brinton’s revolution theory, we looked into this theory on revolutions, that they all have an incubation stage, a moderate stage, a crisis stage, and a recovery stage, each with their respective characteristics. To understand it better, we would apply it to George Orwell’s “Animal Farm.” As we would later be using it for actual revolutions!

Infographic

To learn more about this theory we made an infographic based on George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” which was a book we had to read about animals who make a social and government system after overthrow their owner. In order to fully understand the book how it ties with Crane Brinton’s theory this was my infographic!

Another infographic?

After making this infographic and better understanding the anatomy of a revolution, we could begin to apply this to a revolution that happened in real life, in my case, I had to research the Russian revolution and how it tied to this revolution theory, ultimately ending with this result for  my final infographic:

What did we do for the exhibition?

Well, using our newly found knowledge on our respective revolutions (Russian, Haitian, French, American, and Meiji) in our groups of 5-6 we had to make a Rube Goldberg machine with 10 actions which would represent 10 key events in our revolution. A Rube Goldberg Machine is a machine which achieves something which can be done easily with multiple actions occurring, such as dominoes being knocked over by a rolling ball. Our Rube Goldberg looked like this! Our final action of our Rube Goldberg was a ball rolling into an elevator, showing the Bolsheviks taking Russia through a transformative period, ultimately leading them to become a socialist republic. This is how our machine looked:

My answer to the driving question 

Our driving question in this project was “What Factors Precipitate ‘Revolution’ and How Have They Shaped the Modern World?” My answer to this question would be: A revolution can be started or shaped by many factors such as a king being abdicated, or a war taking place. Revolutions have shaped the modern world in many ways, revolutions shape the way the world is because they make change, a lot of change. An example of this is the Russian Revolution, the people weren’t happy with Tsar Nicholas II, he got kicked out of power, different parties are formed, the two parties (bolsheviks and provisional government) go to war at the winter palace, and bolsheviks win, ultimately turning Russia into a socialist republic by the end of the revolution. 

Conclusion

After it’s all said and done, this project was pretty fun and was quite enjoyable! I found collaborating with my group and making a Rube Goldberg was a great experience and is something I got to learn a lot about. Thanks for reading this blog post!