Rube Goldberg

For the last five weeks, Rebecca has been working on a science project with a partner. The task, build a Rube Goldberg machine.  Basically, combine 6 simple machines, using three of Newton's laws of motion, to perform a simple task ... move a soda can a meter, pop a balloon, knock over a row of dominoes, etc..  

The girls settled on removing a lid from an applesauce jar, and pouring the apple sauce into a bowl as their task, and put together a plan.  Once they had a plan, a design, a phone call to Grandpa Bob (who should get all the adult credit for insuring this project happened) was made.  Rebecca really wanted the jar lid to be sealed, but I was able to convince her that for this project an unsealed lid would be sufficient.  Maybe for their 8th grade Rube Goldberg project they will figure out how to remove a sealed lid from a canning jar.  

Alex, Anna and I went up with GR to see the projects in action.  So cool. So fun.  There were some really ingenious projects done with very, very simple materials.  I wish I had pictures and video of all of them, but there were so many!  The 5th graders presented their projects to 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 6th grade classes who came to see the three 5th grade classes machines in action.  

Here's Becca's project in action, followed by two classmates projects: