If you teach physics or physical science, you’ve heard of Rube Goldberg. If you’ve seen the music video “This Too Shall Pass” by OK Go then you’ve seen Rube Goldberg. If you don’t fall into either of those categories: the Rube Goldberg project is based off of the Pulitzer prize winning cartoonist of the same name. He created around 50,000 cartoons in his lifetime and defines a Rube Goldberg machine as “a comically involved, complicated invention, laboriously contrived to perform a simple operation”
Rube Goldberg projects take many shapes and forms and are done throughout all grades of learning but all projects will involve a series of chain reactions until a final goal is reached. I use Rube Goldberg with my senior physics students during my energy unit which comes towards the end of first semester. Students enjoy the creativity involved with building the machine and the sense of accomplishment when they succeed.
Procedure:
My students start with the end. What will their device accomplish? Some of my favorite end goals that my students have come up with are:
Drop a Mentos in coke
Cause a volcanic eruption (with baking soda and vinegar)
Pour water into someone's mouth
Turn off the classroom light
Water a plant
Pop a balloon
Press "play music" button on the Chromebook
After picking their end goals, they work backwards. They review materials that will be available to build and design a device on paper that will accomplish their goal. Towards the end of the project, they will refine their sketch to match what they actually built. They also must design and 3D print an object to be a part of their project.
Then I move the class to a new room, because we need to be able to leave the devices set up during the building process. I have not always been able to move rooms during this project and so students would have to pretty much box everything up at the end of each class. Being able to leave it set up saves so much time.
Next, students begin the building phase, testing it out along the way. I provide as many materials as I can collected over the years including: wrapping paper tubes, paper towel rolls, PVC pipes, pipe cleaners, string, cardboard, dominoes, marbles, toy cars, pulleys, dowels, peg boards, funnels, lots of masking tape, and much more. They are allowed to bring materials from home but they are not allowed to purchase anything. At the end of the project, I make sure students don’t throw anything away that can be reused the following year.
Students will go through many iterations of their project with constant testing and rebuilding before reaching their final design. Towards the end of the building phase before presenting to the class, students take a variety of measurements from their device in order to complete required calculations. I have my students calculate potential energy, kinetic energy, mechanical energy of the simple machines used, velocity, and acceleration and different points throughout the device.
I give my students about 5 days total from start to finish for this project and the last day is presentation and clean up.
I use a rubric to grade the machine overall. Does it have the required number of steps? The required number of simple machines? Does it work or does it need human intervention? Is it creative? Did they design something with the 3D printer? Everyone in the group receives the same score for the device. After cleaning up, the students begin working on a lab report which includes the calculations, tracing energy transfers throughout the device, and answering some analysis questions about the project. They also do a peer review.
Conclusion
Rube Goldberg is a fun, creative way to get students thinking about energy and energy transfers. It's an opportunity to apply scientific concepts in a new way. It also allows them to be engineers by building the machine, designing something for the 3D printer, testing their machine and making adjustments, and then making calculations. It also teaches them about collaboration, communication, and time management. All of these skills make this a worthwhile project.
Want to see more physics projects that I do in my classroom? Check out my teachers pay teachers store and my blog post on UV Radiation. As an Amazon associate this post may contain affiliate links.
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