Monday, March 10, 2008
Journal 3-4
Energy/Rube Goldberg Week
I. Question
Last week, I asked for a trick behind making a successful Rube Goldberg device…I searched everywhere for “tricks” to making a good one, but came across nothing! It appears that there are no tricks. However, what I have gathered from the information online is that one only needs to be very methodical, precise, and plan out absolutely everything in order to achieve. Also, household items will often do – those who have made great devices often use ordinary objects doing simple motions that make a complex machine.
II. Summary of Class – Thoughts
This week, we focused on the energy that we use in our personal lives and in our home life. We started out by learning about automobiles, since they are major culprits of energy consumption. I was shocked to see not only how expensive they were, but the amount of inefficiency they have. I can hardly believe that even the most efficient of efficient engines can only use up to 30% of what is put in to it. Something has to be done! Unfortunately, the hybrid cars, we learned, don’t really save that much money at all. Well, we need cars that will use 100 miles to the galloon and then we will be having bigger savings. Yet, the technology we need to make breakthroughs is truly must be much more revolutionary.
Also, I was shocked to learn how much is spent on heating vs. cooling within houses. Energy bills are completely astronomical! I had no idea it was easy to spend many thousands per years! This is not what I expected and I want to now do as much as I can to reduce how much I use. Perhaps by opening a window here and there or not making it quite so hot in the winter will help a little.
Then, we focused on Rube Goldberg projects again. These are soo difficult to design but I think my group’s ideas are certainly coming along. It seems the trick is to be creative, thought-provoking, yet methodical and exact in designing. On Friday, we updated our plans and I think that ours has the potential to be really good – at least I hope so!
Thus far, our idea is to have our machine that we build successfully detonate the infamous “Easy Button”. We had the idea of a ball rolling down a ramp, a lever, dominoes, and a book falling on the easy button. The only gap that we have is that we are unsure about the step(s) in between the lever and the book falling on the easy button. We are totally at a loss for what we should do!! Our goals are to be solid on what we are doing, make any modifications necessary to succeed, and try to build/test it out soon. We will need an easy button, lever, book, dominoes, balls, ramp, and the rest is unclear…
III. My Inquiry
What is the most famous Rube Goldberg design??
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