During the research phase:
- Blank on ideas, we solved this issue by spending extra time going on Youtube and watching videos to get ideas from other people who have made their own Rube Goldberg machines.
- Coordinating our ideas, we all had our own visions for the project, and it was a bit of a challenge for us all to agree of what we want the end product to look like.
- Thinking logically. We would have ideas that we wanted to work but going off of what things we had already planned and how this new feature would fit in let alone make sure what we want is something that is achievable for people of our skill level with tools. The solution to that problem was to really think about what we wanted to do and exactly how we were going to do it.
Drafting and Design:
- Our first edition of the teeter totter we wanted to build really didn’t work. We had to make a second one and we almost made a 3rd one but we agreed this one worked but wasn’t exactly pretty.
- We wanted to make a type of contraption that would include a nerf gun, a hair dryer and a ping pong ball but we thought about it more and realized how difficult it would be to get that to work and that was an idea that we decided to scrap and replace with the lazy Susan and scissors.
- We also wanted to use a pully but we could not figure out how to implement it into the res t of the project so that was another idea that just ended up being scrapped in the final design.
Materials:
- We had planned to use hot wheels tracks, but we couldn’t get them in time, so our solution was to make our own tracks for the cars using cardboard and hot glue.
- We were going to use one of the hot wheels booster tracks that would make the cars go a lot faster but by the time we got one we figured out the hard way that it was broken so we had to steer away from the design and change up the last part right on the last steps of the work.
- There was supposed to be a wheel and axle around the middle of the project after the dominoes, but we couldn’t get the dominoes to push the wheel and axle to roll so we had to just use the dominoes that would fall off of the table.
Tools and equipment use:
- I was not very good at using hot glue but my group members were a lot better with it so I would cut the cardboard and they would glue the pieces together.
- Another issue is that I was not so confident in my abilities to use the saws. I could If I needed to, but I would rather have a member of my group use it and I would watch them do it so that next time I would be able to do it so that’s what I did.
- I never really used box cutters prior to doing this project so I was a bit nervous the first time I had to use them but after a few times I had become a lot more confident in using them. Now I am willing to use them whenever they are needed, they are very convenient.
Design and Modifications:
- Getting the lazy Susan to close the scissors on the string was a challenge because the first car we were using to pull it just would not pull it enough to close the scissors with much force, so we asked Kaeden if he could bring a remote-control car that would pull it with more force. He brought it and it ended up working really well.
- Once we got the scissors to close we had the issue where the string was too strong for us to cut. We got help from the teachers and they told us to go to the home ec room and ask them for a thinner string that would cut better and like they said it worked really well and cut on the second try.
- Our tracks fell apart and fell off of the stand we had made for them a few times so we had to glue them multiple times and be more careful when handling the to make sure that wouldn’t happen.
From this project I learned how to use a box cutter effectively and that they are really convenient to use when you need to do something, and it is small enough that you don’t see a need to use wood for it. That leads into the other thing that I learned which is that cardboard is a lot more reliable than I thought it was. At the beginning, I thought that we would have to use wood for all of it but we ended up using mostly cardboard and I’m happy about that because it is a lot easier to work with. The 3rd thing that I learned from doing this project Is that the internet can be really deceiving when trying to show the difficulty of doing things. Some people set up parts that we tried to use with ease but when we tried to do it, it took us pretty much an entire block to do. Getting the phone’s vibrations to move the car was the thing that we spent a lot of time working on and Kaeden spent pretty much an entire block trying to get it to work consistently but in the end he was good at setting it up and we used it to start off the car on ours. Another thing I learned was that I really enjoy bringing my ideas into the world. For example, I wanted to use the lazy Susan to close the scissors, but I had no clue how to do it, so watching the idea come to life was really cool to me. The last thing this project taught me was how to admit that I was wrong in an idea. Sometimes my group would tell me that the idea I had would not work and I had to agree with them about it.
