Rube Goldberg Project : The Buzzer Beater
Our task was to create the most complex way to complete a task using simple machines in the manner of Rube Goldberg. We did that by creating the buzzer beater, a machine that completed the task of shooting a basketball into a hoop. We had 11days and 25 hours and to build, make sure it worked, and make a great presentation. All of us had to pitch in and help as we started doing the building. First we had to make sure that our machine would have ten steps, so in our sketch we carefully labeled every step to make sure we would have enough. When I was looking at our sketch a lot of our ideas didn't seem like they would work out and I was a little concerned, but in the end we made it all work.
We got our idea the buzzer beater because almost everyone in our group plays basketball, so we concluded that would be the best idea, and we could decorate it with famous basketball players, and I had a basketball hoop we could use. We luckily had some experienced builders in our group that were good with power tools so our project was very sturdy with all the nails screwed in so it could always work to its maximum potential.
We got our idea the buzzer beater because almost everyone in our group plays basketball, so we concluded that would be the best idea, and we could decorate it with famous basketball players, and I had a basketball hoop we could use. We luckily had some experienced builders in our group that were good with power tools so our project was very sturdy with all the nails screwed in so it could always work to its maximum potential.
Project History
We knew that as soon as our group had started working together that we could create a great project, all of us had many great ideas and we started working in no time.
The first part of our project went pretty fast, and it was fairly easy to build. We did have troubles with making our boot kick the marble exactly because it would either miss the ball completely or make the marble fall off. It took longer than we had hoped to work on just the boot. Our first ramp was very easy to screw in, but then we had to make a pipe to connect to the next inclined planes. That caused us some trouble, it kept getting stuck in the bottom of the pipe, but we figured it out by putting more force on the ball in the beginning so it would not get stuck again. In step five we had a little bit of troubles figuring out how to make the ramp balance the golf ball on top, but also be able to make it tilt over when the marble came and hit it. We got it to work by drilling a big divot on the ramp to ensure the golf ball stayed. The newtons cradle was a little bit challenging, we first had the golf balls connected by tying rubber bands around them, but that was very inefficient and the balls kept coming off. We ended up drilling holes in the golf balls and sticking a string in and superglueing it in so it wouldn't fall out.
The hardest part about the screw was getting the ball to actually go into it. The newtons cradle would hit the tiny marble with so much force that it would just bounce off the edge of the screw entrance. To fix that we made a small ramp leading exactly to the screws entrance so the ball wouldn't stray. On step eight we couldn't get the marble to have enough force that when it hit the tennis ball it would make it roll. So we built a small ramp that made the small marble go over the tennis ball and behind it, giving the marble enough force to nock the tennis ball and make it move. But since we made the ramp go over the ball, sometimes it would just fly off the edge. Making us put some popsicle sticks on the edge to keep it from falling off. On step nine the blade it didn't take us very long to make, but it did take us a while to figure out how we would make it set off. We then had to make sure the blade would cut the string every time, but we just added more springs to the blade so it swung around with so much force that it was guaranteed that it would be cut every time. The pulleys were very easy to set up, the only problem was the string had a tendency to fall off of it. Finally with the string being cut it releases the ball making it fall into the hoop. We had originally planed to have the small basketball on one side of a lever and have a weight drop on the other side making the ball fly through the air and land in the hoop. But we couldn't get it to work or when it did work, it was rare. Even though we had a few changes and difficulties we got a complex machine to do a simple task.
We knew that as soon as our group had started working together that we could create a great project, all of us had many great ideas and we started working in no time.
The first part of our project went pretty fast, and it was fairly easy to build. We did have troubles with making our boot kick the marble exactly because it would either miss the ball completely or make the marble fall off. It took longer than we had hoped to work on just the boot. Our first ramp was very easy to screw in, but then we had to make a pipe to connect to the next inclined planes. That caused us some trouble, it kept getting stuck in the bottom of the pipe, but we figured it out by putting more force on the ball in the beginning so it would not get stuck again. In step five we had a little bit of troubles figuring out how to make the ramp balance the golf ball on top, but also be able to make it tilt over when the marble came and hit it. We got it to work by drilling a big divot on the ramp to ensure the golf ball stayed. The newtons cradle was a little bit challenging, we first had the golf balls connected by tying rubber bands around them, but that was very inefficient and the balls kept coming off. We ended up drilling holes in the golf balls and sticking a string in and superglueing it in so it wouldn't fall out.
The hardest part about the screw was getting the ball to actually go into it. The newtons cradle would hit the tiny marble with so much force that it would just bounce off the edge of the screw entrance. To fix that we made a small ramp leading exactly to the screws entrance so the ball wouldn't stray. On step eight we couldn't get the marble to have enough force that when it hit the tennis ball it would make it roll. So we built a small ramp that made the small marble go over the tennis ball and behind it, giving the marble enough force to nock the tennis ball and make it move. But since we made the ramp go over the ball, sometimes it would just fly off the edge. Making us put some popsicle sticks on the edge to keep it from falling off. On step nine the blade it didn't take us very long to make, but it did take us a while to figure out how we would make it set off. We then had to make sure the blade would cut the string every time, but we just added more springs to the blade so it swung around with so much force that it was guaranteed that it would be cut every time. The pulleys were very easy to set up, the only problem was the string had a tendency to fall off of it. Finally with the string being cut it releases the ball making it fall into the hoop. We had originally planed to have the small basketball on one side of a lever and have a weight drop on the other side making the ball fly through the air and land in the hoop. But we couldn't get it to work or when it did work, it was rare. Even though we had a few changes and difficulties we got a complex machine to do a simple task.
Calculations
For our calculations we used many physics and engineering concepts such as:
Speed- How fast an object travels (usually in meters per second, or feet per second). We had to use speed when calculating our screw, we toke the distance of the screw and divided it by the time it toke to go down it to get the speed of the ball.
Velocity- Velocity is speed with direction. We used this when calculating our first step which was the boot licking the marble, we found the measurements and how many seconds it toke to swing, finding out the velocity.
Mechanical Advantage- Advantage of force given by machines. We used mechanical advantage for many things, especially to help us find out more complex calculations like acceleration on an inclined plane. We mainly used mechanical advantage on most of our inclined planes, and our pulley system. To find the mechanical advantage we would take the measurements of the height and the length of the inclined plane then divide it to get our ideal mechanical advantage.
Acceleration- The rate of change of velocity per unit of time. We used acceleration on our inclined planes to find how fast the ball accelerates on them. To find our acceleration on step 3 (the five inclined planes) we first found the mechanical advantage of the inclined planes then we divided that by gravity to then get how much the ball accelerates on the inclined planes.
Force- Strength or energy as an attribute of physical action or movement. We used force a lot in our calculations, especially in our energy transfers. To find the force we have to find the mass and the acceleration, then multiply it together. For example, when we had to fins the force of a ball hitting another ball, we first had to find the acceleration of the ball that was moving. We then toke that number and multiplied it by the balls mass to find out how much force it could exert.
Speed- How fast an object travels (usually in meters per second, or feet per second). We had to use speed when calculating our screw, we toke the distance of the screw and divided it by the time it toke to go down it to get the speed of the ball.
Velocity- Velocity is speed with direction. We used this when calculating our first step which was the boot licking the marble, we found the measurements and how many seconds it toke to swing, finding out the velocity.
Mechanical Advantage- Advantage of force given by machines. We used mechanical advantage for many things, especially to help us find out more complex calculations like acceleration on an inclined plane. We mainly used mechanical advantage on most of our inclined planes, and our pulley system. To find the mechanical advantage we would take the measurements of the height and the length of the inclined plane then divide it to get our ideal mechanical advantage.
Acceleration- The rate of change of velocity per unit of time. We used acceleration on our inclined planes to find how fast the ball accelerates on them. To find our acceleration on step 3 (the five inclined planes) we first found the mechanical advantage of the inclined planes then we divided that by gravity to then get how much the ball accelerates on the inclined planes.
Force- Strength or energy as an attribute of physical action or movement. We used force a lot in our calculations, especially in our energy transfers. To find the force we have to find the mass and the acceleration, then multiply it together. For example, when we had to fins the force of a ball hitting another ball, we first had to find the acceleration of the ball that was moving. We then toke that number and multiplied it by the balls mass to find out how much force it could exert.
Reflections
In all I feel like out project turned out very well, even though there was a poor rate of it working, that didn't reflect how much work went into it. Its almost like a sports game if you work so hard the whole time and your team was dominating the whole game but you still lost, that was what our Rube Goldberg machine was like. Our ideas defiantly went very well and we had no shortage of imagination. Unfortunately our very creative end project had a very low success rate, as you can see in the video I had to help the ball at one point because we never got a video of the full project working all the way through. Also another problem with our group was the work wasn't spilt up evenly enough, they boys really liked taking over with the power tools and not letting us do as much with the drills or saws as we had maybe liked to.
Some things I have learned about myself are, that you will have to work with people that don't necessarily have the same vision for things as you. For example, when we had conflicting ideas about something we would both have to listen to the other side and be able to look at other peoples ideas. Not just to change your but if your open to listening to other peoples ideas, they could help you improve your idea and make it better. So I have really learned that listening to other people can really help and make our product better. Another thing I learned was that whenever i'm drilling something I need to made sure that I had it in tight enough and that the drill switch was on forward. There was one occasion where the drill bit was too loose when I was drilling and it broke and got stuck in the wood, oops don't want that to happen again so I definantly learned my lesson there. I also new very well how to use the forward and backward switch on the drill because a few times I would be drilling and I would be there for a minute and make no progress which was very frustrating.
Some things that I could have done better was maybe getting together with my group and talk about how we needed to spread the work out more and make sure everyone was included in our building. I feel like the boys would be working on all the drilling and fun stuff while the rest of us were getting them supplies and cleaning up their mess. If we had better communicated with them on making sure everyone was helping out and able to do an equal amount of work we would have had a better project. For our next project I will try and make sure the same thing doesn't happen again. Also I wish we could have communicated a lot better. Sometimes we would disagree on something so greatly that when one of the people walked away the other person would just do their idea quickly before the other person could come back. Like when some people spray painted the board without asking everyone else. That just resulted in someone being mad and a higher chance of conflict more down the road. We all needed to stop to listen and communicate with each other before we added something to our project so nobody would get mad and we could have worked together more and improved the idea before we put it on.
In the beginning we worked very efficiently on our project and we completed it very quickly. Since it was the beginning we didn't have a very good grasp of how much time we had left, so we were taking our time. Unfortunately our hardest steps were at the end and since we didn't have very good timing we were rushing at the end to put together some complex steps. Originally we planned to have our mini basketball being shot in with a lever and a weight would hit one side of it rocketing the ball into the hoop. We had many trials and errors and we soon came to the conclusion that we needed to change how the ball went into the hoop. One of our best group moments was when we decided we had to change that and have the ball just drop in from the pulley so it would actually work. I was so glad we were able to change our idea and not just be set on it have to be shot in by the lever. I would say the best part was the one time it worked all the way through during the presentation night, we were so proud and happy. All our work had paid off.
Some things I have learned about myself are, that you will have to work with people that don't necessarily have the same vision for things as you. For example, when we had conflicting ideas about something we would both have to listen to the other side and be able to look at other peoples ideas. Not just to change your but if your open to listening to other peoples ideas, they could help you improve your idea and make it better. So I have really learned that listening to other people can really help and make our product better. Another thing I learned was that whenever i'm drilling something I need to made sure that I had it in tight enough and that the drill switch was on forward. There was one occasion where the drill bit was too loose when I was drilling and it broke and got stuck in the wood, oops don't want that to happen again so I definantly learned my lesson there. I also new very well how to use the forward and backward switch on the drill because a few times I would be drilling and I would be there for a minute and make no progress which was very frustrating.
Some things that I could have done better was maybe getting together with my group and talk about how we needed to spread the work out more and make sure everyone was included in our building. I feel like the boys would be working on all the drilling and fun stuff while the rest of us were getting them supplies and cleaning up their mess. If we had better communicated with them on making sure everyone was helping out and able to do an equal amount of work we would have had a better project. For our next project I will try and make sure the same thing doesn't happen again. Also I wish we could have communicated a lot better. Sometimes we would disagree on something so greatly that when one of the people walked away the other person would just do their idea quickly before the other person could come back. Like when some people spray painted the board without asking everyone else. That just resulted in someone being mad and a higher chance of conflict more down the road. We all needed to stop to listen and communicate with each other before we added something to our project so nobody would get mad and we could have worked together more and improved the idea before we put it on.
In the beginning we worked very efficiently on our project and we completed it very quickly. Since it was the beginning we didn't have a very good grasp of how much time we had left, so we were taking our time. Unfortunately our hardest steps were at the end and since we didn't have very good timing we were rushing at the end to put together some complex steps. Originally we planned to have our mini basketball being shot in with a lever and a weight would hit one side of it rocketing the ball into the hoop. We had many trials and errors and we soon came to the conclusion that we needed to change how the ball went into the hoop. One of our best group moments was when we decided we had to change that and have the ball just drop in from the pulley so it would actually work. I was so glad we were able to change our idea and not just be set on it have to be shot in by the lever. I would say the best part was the one time it worked all the way through during the presentation night, we were so proud and happy. All our work had paid off.