Sum-Up: How to Do a Rube Goldberg Project and Not Lose Your Mind

Ever since I started posting about our Rube Goldberg work, I’ve noticed that lots of folks have found their way to my blog with searches like “how do I do a Rube Goldberg.” There’s really no manual out there that I’ve found – no step by step instruction book. This makes sense, really, because the whole idea behind the Rube is that every one is different and completely dependent on the individual’s creativity.

Still, after doing it with my kids, I think I can provide a bit of road map for other intrepid adventurers.

How To Do A Rube Goldberg

1. Begin with youtube. Just spend a morning searching for Rube Goldberg videos – there are hundreds! And so amazing. Here are a couple of my favorites:

2. Don’t forget to look at the original drawings too! Try Rube Goldberg: Inventions by Maynard Frank Wolfe.

3. Discuss with your students that this is about process as much as the end result. The magic of the Rube is the myriad opportunities it provides for problem solving! Be sure to show them the Mythbusters Christmas special, which shows not only their Rube Goldberg project, but provides a delightful insight to how many times things go wrong in a project like this, even for professionals.

4. Instruct students to decide on themes and an end action. Will the machine tell a story? What is its ultimate goal? Each portion of the machine has to receive an action that converts its potential energy to kinetic energy. It also has to cause the next action to happen. But don’t forget humor – this should be fun! My kids incorporated several of their favorite story lines into their project, including Harry Potter, Munchkin, and Eva’s beloved stuffed animal Kinzy.

5. Consider offering certain parameters. If you’re wanting to study simple machines as a part of this project (which I did), require the students to incorporate them. They’ll do this anyway, because Rube Goldbergs are all about simple machines! But by requiring certain machines, it helps students identify the components they’re using and think about them scientifically. Parameters also help get the kids started. The only machine I required for the kids was a pulley. I also required that the final machine be comprised of at least five components. But the rest was up to them.

6. Have your students draw out ideas for their machines. Or not. Follow your kids’ leads. If they’re list-makers, let them make lists. If they feel the need instead to just get started, then let them. Again, this is all about process.

7. Be prepared to ditch large amounts of work if necessary. If something’s not working, then change it to make the project successful. We had to change everything, including our timeline, materials, and even who would be working on it.

8. Ask discussion-oriented questions when things go wrong and be sure to have kids identify several things. Ask 1) what went wrong, 2) what made it go wrong, and 3) what are the possible solutions. Be sure to have them identify many possible solutions before choosing one. For example, when our broomstick fell too quickly on our falling pendulum, the kids identified all the things that could slow it down. They could increase friction, decrease the broomstick’s weight, or decrease the incline of the pendulum track. We discussed the pros and cons of each avenue before the kids made their choice.

9. Do not be in a hurry. Rube Goldbergs can take a lot of time, depending on how much the kids bring to it. Don’t rush the process.

10. Video, share, and celebrate your successes! Take advantage of youtube, facebook, email, your school website, friends, and family. If you’re into it, do a blooper reel too.

11. And lastly, I offer a prequel suggestion. Rube Goldberg machines are a great way to teach physical science. We did a semester of physics and simple machines before we started the Rube. I used Lego WeDo Education (which was a great concept, but the software was constantly crashing), Forces and Motion Science Fair Projects by Robert Gardner, Zombies and Forces and Motion by Mark Weakland, and a cute albeit dated series of clips I found on youtube by Eureka. You’ll find them by going to youtube and typing “simple machines Eureka.” There are a lot of other great instructional simple machines videos too, so have fun browsing around.

And now for the closeup tour. First, the video once again:

This is component number one, a simple ramp. The kids love the game Munchkin, and in that game there is a card called “Kill the Hireling.”

They think that’s hilarious and chose to use it for the first piece. The hireling (the lego figure at the bottom) ended up having to go without a head, because its head kept getting in the way. But we thought that was funny too.

This next component is one that we saw in a lot of other Rube Goldberg machines. The goal is to transfer movement from low to high using ramps, balls, and levers. Each ramp allows the ball to roll down and into a lever; the lever transfers the motion upwards to the next ramp.

The top ball falls into a bucket that’s attached to a pulley. The pulley system has a counterweight which is offset by the ball’s action.

…

When the pulley system is activated, it pulls a string (I did help with the tying of the string) that’s attached to a stick that props up a flying broomstick (a nod to Harry Potter). Once that stick is pulled away, the broomstick swings on a pendulum.

At the end of the broomstick’s arc is Kinzy’s bowl of eucalyptus. This bowl gets knocked off its pedestal and onto Kinzy’s table. Lunch is served!

…

The Rube Goldberg Conclusion: If it’s broken, toss it. Then try something new!

Unveiling the Masterful Lego Rube Goldberg, by Eva!

You know how you get an idea in your head about the way a certain thing is going to be, and you get really attached to that idea, and you put a lot of time towards it, but it’s just not working, but you don’t want to let it go, because you want so badly for it to work out just how you thought? Yeah. I had a vision. A RUBE GOLDBERG VISION! We would create a project worthy of an OK Go video. We would start upstairs, transferring motion down the stairwell to the basement. We would have pulleys and wood and metal and all sorts of crazy contraptions. The kids would be so incredibly engaged they would wake up begging to work on it. They would become engineering geniuses, inspired to now go forth and invent the technology needed to solve all the world’s environmental problems. In short, this project would change the world.

Here’s the reality: Ian is swamped with his own Rube Goldberg project on his Science Olympiad team. Regionals are coming up, and the boy has a lot of ground to cover in the coming weeks. Actually, as noted in an earlier post, he’s been under a lot of deadlines, and I’m trying to ease things up for him a lot, opening up time so that he can do quality work on his existing projects. Though the falling pendulum was Eva’s design, the size and types of materials were a bit daunting to her. It was clear to me that even with (or perhaps because of) Ian’s involvement, Eva wasn’t taking as much initiative as I had hoped. But without Ian as a teammate, I was afraid that she would simply follow my instructions, and I didn’t want that.

We did what we always do in situations like these: we formed a huddle ’round the classroom table. We concluded that the pendulum, though not a part of a larger machine, was still an excellent project, providing tons of problem solving opportunity. We decided to give it a loving farewell and take a hammer to it. (And don’t we all kind of love destroying things?) Ian will continue his work with Rube through his Science Olympiad team, so that’s set. Then we turned to Eva. “Eva,” I said. “How would you like to build your very own Rube Goldberg by yourself with legos?” Her eyes lit up. The wood and nails and saws and whatnot were simply out of her reach. She didn’t know how to use those things to create what she envisioned. But legos… this is a world she understands.

We decided to require five parts to her Rube Goldberg (this had been our goal for the larger Rube as well, building one component per week). I would answer questions, but really leave the design work to her. In just one week, she finished the entire project! I helped a bit with the pulleys, and then did some troubleshooting with her, but this was truly Eva’s project. Changing the materials was key, and I was pleased to be reaffirmed in our decision to shift the game plan.

In tomorrow’s post, I’m going to talk more about the Rube Goldberg process and include more photos of each component. But what you’re wanting now is the video of course! Here’s Eva to walk you through it:

And here’s the machine in action!

And one more time from another angle:

Rube Goldberg, Falling Pendulum, Take One Zillion

I know you’ve been dying to know how our falling pendulum project is going. Well, cats and kittens, I’m happy to report we worked on it all morning yesterday and called it success. First off, as discussed, we cut a new board and replaced the sweepy piece. The cool bit about the new straight zigzag is that it looked like Harry Potter’s scar. Since this piece of our Rube Goldberg is dedicated to the Harry Potter story (broomstick a’flying), this was an Exciting Discovery.

Unfortunately, the new piece of plywood wasn’t quite as wide as the original, so the incline of the zigzag turned out to be a bit steeper than we had intended. This ended up being a problem. But here we are before we knew it would be a problem, all so very proud of our construction skills.

Here's the new pendulum board, with the straight zigzag.

Here’s what happened:

It just went down too quickly. There was no pendulum action to speak of, and it looked messy. We hrumphed. Ian got super frustrated and had to take a break. But Eva and I carried on, brainstorming possible solutions. Generated ideas included cutting a new board to decrease the incline, increasing friction somehow, and decreasing the weight of the broom. We decided that the most effective option was to cut a new board. But we also wanted to move past this portion of the Rube Goldberg. So we chose what we felt was the second-best (and quicker) option: decrease the weight of the broom.

Eva is a Harry Potter fanatic, and like any witch worth her salt, she owns more than one flying broom. Her second broom is a wooden dowel bound with twigs. We weighed it and discovered it was a good 11 ounces lighter than the plastic broom. We switched it out. We also switched out our heavy wooden pendulum arm for a much lighter picture frame and hot glued a small plastic ring on one end. We then used green yarn to keep it from sliding down the dowel. You just need to see it:

The new, lighter broomstick, ready for take-off.

At this point, Ian was working on a music theory assignment, with a small black cloud looming over his head. He can’t stand not being able to figure something out right away, so he had switched to a topic that he felt he had more control over. But Eva and I were not to be deterred, so after lightening the counterweight bucket and giving everything one last cinching, we took off! And here it goes!

Sorry for my loud “woo hoo.” I can’t seem to help myself. Though the end result was not as graceful as had first imagined, we decided that it was good enough to be considered a success. In the final project, the broom will knock over something when it reaches its destination. Of course we’ll have to create something else to get it going to begin with. All to come. We still have 5 weeks to work on this.

And what about poor Ian? This lesson led into a wonderful momma-son discussion about the importance of problem solving. Ian is incredibly bright, and concepts come to him with remarkable ease. There is not much in the way of academics that he struggles with, and when he does hit a snag, he gets down down down. I told him that though his memorization and comprehension abilities knock my socks off, the more important skill here is to think creatively about how you use the facts at hand. This is how new technologies get invented. It will be how we figure out what to do about this climate change mess we’ve gotten ourselves into. So many problems don’t have instruction manuals; we have to create new solutions to these unprecedented issues. This is difficult for Ian, who likes to master something at his first go. I told him (again) that the point of doing the Rube Goldberg isn’t the finished product, but all the fabulous, infuriating toe-stumpers along the way. It’s the process that we’re learning from here.

He nodded and said he understood. But I think this is a life lesson for him, which will need to be re-experienced one zillion more times in the coming years.

Rube Goldberg Progress Report

As you may remember, the kids and I are spending a large chunk of our school year building a Rube Goldberg machine. For those of you just joining us, I’ll give you the nutshell story so far (you can also click on the Rube Goldberg category at the end of this post, and it should pull up all my related previous posts).

We began by studying physics, simple machines, and Newton’s laws all while working through the Lego WeDo robotics kit. Then Ian signed up for the Rube Goldberg project with his Science Olympiad group at the middle school, and I thought: I want in on that. So we decided to build one at home as well.

To start the Rube Goldberg project, we began with youtube video research, sketching plans on our hallway wall, and building smaller projects to get our feet wet. When we got brave enough, we picked one of the kid’s brainstormed components, which happened to be Eva’s Harry Potter themed falling pendulum. She wants to make her Harry Potter broomstick “fly” back and forth and down; at the end, it will knock something else over starting a new series of events.

There a couple of things you should know before I share our progress with you.

1) Despite my most fervent efforts, I can find no resources that teach how to build a Rube Goldberg machine, or how to do this in a classroom setting. This is probably due to the fact that the very essence of these machines is their uniqueness. It’s really whatever you come up with. But I can’t find resources to even help us get started. I’ve heard to begin by building the beginning and end components, but that wasn’t working for us. So we’re starting in the middle and moving both backward and forward. We’re making this up as we go here.

2) I am in no way an engineer or handy-woman. Once early in our marriage, Jamie and I knocked out some wet sheet rock in the top of a tiny closet, looking for the offending leak. What we found was a distressing lack of pipes. Perplexed, we went upstairs only to discover a leaky water bottle stored in the closet directly above. The angst and agony we went through to replace the unnecessarily removed sheet rock served as an early relationship test. We made it out alive, but we now try to limit our household projects to stay within our limited abilities.

3) I’ve never studied physics.

4) We have no working budget.

Now that I’ve said all that, I’m sure you are reading with the appropriate non-mocking attitude that I strongly desire. I’m going to tell you our story through pictures.

Eva's sketch of her Harry Potter broomstick falling pendulum

This is what we started with. We decided to use plywood to make the main face of the structure. I raided my garage and found quite a few handy items, namely all the wood we needed. The plywood is left over from a playhouse we built several years ago. The 2x4s we found to make the stand were old concrete frames that a contractor left here after laying in a patio for us.

The kids sketched out the design on the plywood, and I suggested a sweeping pattern to enhance the broom’s sweeping motion (pun intended). I used a jigsaw to cut out their pattern.

Cutting out the sketched pattern

I cut our stand down to size, and the we put it all together in the basement.

Ian nails the plywood to the stand

Once the kids put the feet on, they could stand the whole thing up:

The erected pendulum structure

Next the kids took an old dowel, tied the broom to one end, and a bucket full of weights to the other. Old margarine lids served as the “washers” to keep the dowel from sliding. Here’s Eva adding the counterweights to the bucket:

Eva balances out the counterweight bucket

And here’s Falling Pendulum Version 1:

The falling pendulum, ready for its first trial

Here’s what happened when they tried it out:

The result of the first falling pendulum trial

As you can see, it was a total train wreck. The margarine lids had no ability whatsoever to keep the dowel from sliding, and the broom spun in circles, crashing in to the frame. We had issues to resolve, so it was off to the hardware store to see what we could find!

Hardware store bounty!

The washers and pins replaced the margarine lids. Here’s the new look:

Much fancier than the margarine lids. And more effective.

But the next trial didn’t do much better. Turns out that the washers, big though they are, weren’t big enough to stay on the track at the peak/turns. They fell right out. Eva tried to fix this by hot gluing some yogurt lid pieces to the corners, but that didn’t end up working, because the washers tended to slip up inside anyway. To make a more effective correction, Ian took the wood I had cut out of the plywood piece and had me hacksaw off some pieces that they hot-glued back into the slot.

Eva hot glues on the plastic frame adjustments

And here’s the revised revision:

Eva glues in scrap wood to fill in the gaps

The next issue we tackled was the broom-on-rope-swingy-issue. We needed it to swing back and forth, not twist. Ian grabbed more scrap wood out of the garage, and had me drill some holes to make a non twisty-pendulum arm.

Ian secures the broom to the pendulum bar

We were so proud of ourselves! We had accomplished so much and felt pretty good about how the next trial was going to turn out. And that was our mistake. For alas, when we tried it again, my cleverly advised sweep-up track proved too much; the broom never made it past the first level. It just sat there, staring at us, mocking a bit, I think.

And again:

I didn’t excuse “class” until the kids identified the next revision. They decided to remove the sweep cut, which means I need to cut another piece of plywood (thankfully, I have one more in the garage). We’ll try a straight zig-zag pattern instead.

I’m loving all the problem solving this project is providing. When you don’t know what you’re doing, then you just have to figure it out.

Creativity Day

Yesterday I woke up and felt deep down that the normal school day wasn’t meant to be. So I declared Creativity Day! And there was much rejoicing. I do this from time to time, especially when our hearts are committed to particular projects. Yesterday’s was a justified proclamation; the kids and I all have projects going right now, and what we really want to do is work on those all the time. I felt pretty powerful just naming the day and changing gears like that. So what are we up to?

Ian and his story...

Ian’s still digging his composing work and has several songs in his head. He can’t get them out fast enough, and new tunes keep budging their way into his brain, pushing others aside. Basically, he needs more time to get this stuff down. He’s also been assigned to write a science fiction story; he just finished reading The Physics of the Future by Michio Kaku, and Jamie thought this would be a fabulous way to tie his preferred reading into literature. Ian’s eyes lit up at the suggestion, and he can’t stop writing. So yesterday, that’s what he did: composed – both music and story.

Set #1: Kinzy's house

Eva has finished editing her new book and is now ready to begin the artwork. Her book, Kinzy’s Chronicles, is a series of short stories based on her battered and beloved stuffed koala named Kinzy. She’s decided to stage photographs of the stories using her stuffed animals, and this kind of work also takes dedicated time. Yesterday she began building her sets. You can see from the photograph that things are getting messy around here. Actually, that’s her art area, and it’s always that messy.

I’ve been working on a painting for four months now, and was itching to finish it. Additionally, the kids had sketched out the first piece of their Rube Goldberg project, and the wood had been set aside for several days awaiting the touch of a jigsaw. It was a warm day yesterday. Perfect for all these activities.

My finished painting, started in fall and completed in winter

It’s so important to make this time during the school year. I try to keep Fridays open for these kinds of activities throughout the year, but then there are those times when everyone’s just got the craving for more. Stopping our normal routine and honoring the creative nature in each of us is essential for our personal growth; the activities also clear our minds and refocus us for more structured work later. Not to mention that these activities are no less important than those “structured” ones anyway. Ian’s a musician; Eva’s an author. It’s what we do.

Tomorrow I’ll talk a little about revamping our schedule for the spring to accommodate increasing activities and the kids’ unique learning preferences. And don’t you worry, dear readers. I’ll have some Rube Goldberg updates for you very soon. Be forewarned: they’re not all pretty.

 

Kids Teaching Parents (or, Mama Got Schooled)

Ok, so you know how I said in my last post that I like to instill in my kids that parents don’t know it all? Well, let’s just say that I provided a real-life example to my lesson yesterday – all for the kids’ benefit, of course.

We were studying physics – just the introductory stuff, in fact a lesson out of an elementary school physics experiment book. I had perused the material the night before, but honesty I didn’t spend much time on it, figuring that it would be pretty self-explanatory as we went. The lesson was velocity, which as you may know is speed and direction. Speed is distance divided by time. Velocity takes motion into account. I thought that was simple enough… that is until we took a look at a velocity versus time graph. Woah. It blew my mind, because when I think speed and direction, I’m thinking on a two-dimensional plane. If Eva is walking and then veers off to the right, I figured that our velocity versus time graph should reflect the rightward motion. But as it turns out, a velocity versus time graph only considers the forward motion – we’re working in one dimension here.

Please forgive me, physicists, if I got that wrong. And please feel free to provide polite corrections in the comments.

I simply give you this little (hopefully accurate) physics lesson to explain why I was ready to tear my hair out during science class. Eva was working on a separate project, and Ian and I were huddled over graph paper and the experiment book. I felt befuddled. Infuriated. I did what so many students do when they hit a perceived wall: I spent all my energy on the act of being frustrated, which prevented me from calmly working my way through to the solution.

After a while, we came to a sort of understanding and then broke for lunch. At the lunch table, I started laying out clementine peel bits in attempts to further my understanding of our problem, looking to Ian to help me get it. It was then that I had my “aha” moment, realizing visually that I was trying to force my two-dimensional framework on a one-dimensional analysis. Even though Ian got the general concept about 30 minutes before I did, to be honest, neither of us are going to ace a quiz on this subject anytime soon.

I felt bad for being so ill-equipped for this lesson, and that I had let myself fall into a keen state of frustration at my own lack of understanding. I asked Ian what he thought of “class” today. He laughed and said that it wasn’t really “class” as much as us trying to figure out something together. This made me curious so I asked him what he envisioned when he thought of “class.”

“What do you mean?” he asked. “Homeschool class, or public school class?”

“Either,” I said.

“Well,” he replied after a moment, “I think of class as a time that you bring out a really cool project that we then all work on it together.”

I ate that up. I told him that for the most part, I would come with a good understanding of the subject we were studying, but on occasion class would be like today – that I wouldn’t really understand the gist of the lesson, and that we would have to dig it up together (especially as he gets older). I asked him if that would be ok. I expected him to be disappointed and resistant to this approach, especially taking into account my self-confessed frustration during said lesson. But he surprised me. He said, “oh yeah, Mom. I thought today was really fun!”

That was yesterday. Today is Friday, so we do more fun-focused activities. We’re going to spend each Friday for the next five weeks drawing up various Rube Goldberg sketches in preparation for our month of building. We found the only blank wall in the house and stapled up white butcher paper that had been collecting dust in the corner. The kids loved it and immediately drew up several really cool and quite complicated ideas. They added a lot of humor too. This is going to be so fun.

The Wall of Brainstorm

Next week I’m going to do a series of posts about finding the magic in math. I’ve been wanting to do these posts for several months now, but other topics keep taking priority. However, I just know of too many absolutely wonderful math resources to keep them secret any longer. If you’re looking for ideas to re/ignite your kids or students in their love of the world of numbers, stay tuned!

Rube Goldberg Beginnings

The kids dance to holiday music while we deck the halls

Ahhh. We’ve returned from Chicago, eaten the tofurkey, and decked the halls. We’re listening to lots of holiday music, and there’s a beautiful inch of snow on the ground. I love December. After a hard-working semester, we relax the schedule a bit and try to work in something totally fun. Lost of holiday “classes” (gift wrapping, baking, etc.). But this year, it’s all about Mr. Goldberg, the master of “building a better mousetrap”-type contraptions.

As usual, I’m learning this along with the kids; I have no expertise in engineering or construction, and neither Jamie nor I could you call “handy.” So to begin, the kids and I’ve been watching youtube videos of other folks’ Rube Goldberg contraptions. We have a notebook in which the kids can jot down any idea (no matter how crazy) that they’d like to try their hand at. So far, our favorite Rube Goldberg youtube video is OK Go’s “This Too Shall Pass.” I could watch this a zillion times and not get tired of it.

Week before last, I challenged the kids to build small things out of Lego, and then out of our new Contraptions set. I assigned a catapult, ramps, something that worked with wheels and axles, a pulley system – all separate projects, mainly to get them to understand that it’s not just the active part of the machine they have to think about, but the structure that supports it.

Building the end of the machine

This week, however, we plunged into an attempt to put machines together into a larger contraption. The kids focused on domino effects and ramps, and even put a tube in there to guide their ping-pong ball from the table to the floor. I tried to stay out of it, simply pulling out items as offerings to their project. I wanted to get them thinking beyond Lego and the Contraptions set. That’s still mainly what they used, but this is only our first attempt, after all.

My little side project

But I couldn’t completely help myself. On the side, I put together a little swinging action, suspending one of their Lego mini-figures from a noose, and causing it to launch from one plank and swing into a ping-pong ball on the other, putting that object in motion. I offered it up to the kids as a part of their project, but Ian said, “Mom, we really want this just to be ours.” Sigh. Wisdom there. So I backed off and cleaned something.

When they got everything ready, we began the trials, videoing each take, as Mythbusters taught us to do. Even though this is very simple contraption, it turned out to be much more tricky than any of us expected. It took the kids 15 tries to get the whole thing to work, and there were revisions and Frustration, especially from Ian. We had to take 5 and remind ourselves again and again that the failures make up the large majority of this type of project. Once Ian removed his expectation that his contraption would actually work from beginning to end, things became easier.

This is only the first of what I hope to be several machines that the kids build over the coming months, culminating in something a bit bigger; I’ve challenged them to ultimately build something that expands the two floors of our house. We may need to bring in other sciency-type minds to make this work, but it’s all good. We’ll figure it out as we go. I plan to let this be their science “curriculum” for the remainder of the year, so we have plenty of time.

While the kids were building their machine, I went online and ordered a mean set of pulleys, complete with weights and a spring scale. It is my dream that they will somehow incorporate these into their future Rube Goldberg. If you have ideas that you want to suggest, please post them in my comments! I’d love to share them with the kids.