For our final project of this class, we had to take a previous project and "do it better". Tyler, Carina, Andre, Alexa, and I decided to do the Rube Goldberg project again. Since this school year is coming to a close, we decided to have a graduation themed project. Our end product would be to pull a popper and bring a goodbye seniors poster.
Concepts we used in our Do it Better Project
Force - The push or pull on an object that causes change in motion.
Mechanical Advantage - The advantage of force in a machine.
Acceleration - The rate of change in speed or velocity.
Velocity - How fast an object moves in a certain direction.
Potential Energy - Stored energy in an object.
Kinetic Energy - Energy that's already in motion.
Work - Amount of energy put into something.
Pits and Peaks of our Do it Better Project
As our final project in our freshman year of STEM, we had our ups and our downs. Here are the pits and peaks of our Do it Better project. My first pit was how much time we were given. Admittedly, this was mostly our fault being that we chose the project that took the most amount of work, effort, and time. We were still able to finish the project and have it work nearly 100% if we ignored mistakes in setting the board up. Since we had to put the presentation together on the last day of the build days we had, we didn't have as much time to prepare, so when we demonstrated our Rube Goldberg machine, our presentation was a little shaky. My first peak was our communication. Since we knew we had such little time, we quickly divided up the work so we could do the schematics, the board, and the presentation. We were also able to meet during lunch and even after school to get our project to work. My second pit was our planning. Since we had such little time, we decided to jump right into building the project. We didn't have a day to day idea of what we had to get finished, which led us to coming in during lunch and end-of-the-year stress. My second peak was our teamwork. Since we got to choose our groups this time, we were able to make a team that had good chemistry. We knew what we had to bring in for the step we were working on, and we got it the next day. We were able to come together at the end of one of our build days and create an effective and beautiful Rube Goldberg to finish this year.