Project: Winter Survival Experiment
Description: In Physics we were supposed to design an experiment that would give us information on how to survive in winter conditions. My group, unfortunately, struggled with the design part but eventually crafted a solid question we could test. We decided to test if the surface area of brass weights affected how quickly it melts through snow. It was an obscure question, but we tested it nonetheless. It was basically an experiment of heat transfer. In the group, I basically recorded all the numbers that came in with the experiment, and took thermal pictures as we experimented. Because of this, I was also responsible for documenting the data part of the experiment explanation.
Project: Rube GoldBerg
Over the course of about two months now, my Freshman class has worked in groups of three or four to create cause and effect machines, or Rube Goldbergs. Rube Goldbergs are machines made to do simple tasks with complex construction. My group was made up of four people and together we created a Rube that's final task was to pour syrup on top of waffles. We used some projectiles, ramps, dominos, and many more objects to complete this task.
Although there were many problems we had to perservere to get through, the hardest part of our rube construction was trying to get the marble to roll off the music box and knock over a line of dominoes. We had to tape the box down, lift the keys up a bit to balance the marble, and we had to hot glue a pencil ramp onto the side of the music box for the marble to roll correctly. After all this, we realized that the marble was far too small to push over a domino, so we had to get a bigger marble. Because the pencil ramp was designed for the smaller ball, we had to glue a popsicle stick to the side over the pencil for it to roll the marble after it was wound off the box. As the project went on, we managd to create almost a flow of energy that seemed to make the rube fuction. The music box would transfer energy to the marble by flicking its keys to push the marble off of the box. Afterwards, kinetic energy would be applied by the ramp to give the marble enough force to transfer that energy to the domino; knocking the domino over and the whole line after it. We added the balloon and needle to apply elastic pressure that released the car which rolled down a ramp because of more kinetic energy. The car also had needles sticking out of the hood that popped yet another balloon- this one full of syrup. The syrup rolled down two PVCs and into a hole in the frame, where it would be poured onto the waffles below. The project was difficult, and all of my group worked very hard to get the project completed. However my biggest contribution I feel was very important. Mid way through the project, we were lacking in multiple steps and faced faliure. I took the rube home and, although we may have been able to catch up without this, I tried to save the project. I added the funnel feature, the music box, marble, needle, second PVC, and I drilled a "syrup hole" into the frame. I fear that if I had not taken it to my home, we wouldn't have it completed today.