Evidence
I'm not going to lie. This last month has been one of the most stressful months I've ever experienced. I had my doubts throughout the project, like if we would finish in time or it would even work, but it came through in the end. Our original idea was to pour chocolate powder down a screw into a cup of milk and stir it with a spoon. Not a good idea. For one, the screw had too much friction and the chocolate powder would get stuck every time and the fan didn't have enough force to spin the spoon around. So we scratched that idea and decided to make tea by pouring water down the screw and to knock sugar cubes into a cup with a tea bag already in it. The first step was for us to lift a wedge, then allowing a soccer foosball to roll down the inclined plane. The ball would hit a lever which hits a marble and golf ball. The golf ball would then set off a pulley that tipped the cup of water into the screw. At the same time, the marble goes down multiple inclined planes before knocking into the sugar cubes. We had a total of 22 hours of work time and 3 hours of preparing for the presentation before October 1st or Rube Goldberg Night.
Reflection
Overall, I believe my group and I did well on the overall aspect of the project, but we were far from doing a perfect job. Our project worked about 30% of the time and we only got this video of our project working about 10 minutes before the actual presentation. One peak for our project was learning to present in a professional manner. When we first presented, I mumbled a lot and only looked at the board, not interacting with the audience. Through some constructed criticism from both Mr. Williams and my classmates, I began to feel more comfortable as the night went on, having good posture, speaking loudly, and occasionally throwing in jokes here and there to relax the crowd and myself. Another peak was for me was controlling my stress levels and gaining patience. It was nearing the presentation night and our group was nowhere near finished. I had to frantically tell my group mates what to do and struggling to even have the project function which was making me dread Rube Goldberg Night. But with breathing and collaborating outside of class, our group got the work done and had a blast. A pit in this project for our group was time management. When we originally heard all the time we had, we thought it would be a breeze. We wandered to other groups and focused on pretty much everything but our project. We then realized what situation we had put ourselves into especially with none of us knowing how to use power tools. Next time, I'm going to just try to get the job done as soon as possible. Another pit we had was our lack of experience with building. The first incline plane took us about two days when now it would take less than 10 minutes. If we could do it over again or even have another day or two, I feel our project overall would have been more effective. This project has broadened my understanding of physics and excited me about what is to come in the engineering aspect of this year.
Concepts
Force- Force can be described as a pull or push and is calculated by mass times acceleration. When the foosball, after rolling down the inclined plane, hits the lever, it has a certain amount of force.
Speed/Velocity- Speed is the amount of distance an object covers in a given amount of time and velocity is speed with direction. Both are calculated by dividing distance by time. When the foosball is rolling down the inclined plane, it has a certain speed and velocity.
Mechanical Advantage- Also known as MA, it is how much easier the machine makes work and is calculated by dividing the input distance by the output distance. Our pulley has a mechanical advantage of 1 so it gave it no advantage.
Work- Work is the amount of force applied
Potential Energy- Potential energy is the energy of an object in a certain position. PE is calculated by multiplying mass, acceleration due to gravity, and the height of the object. When our golf ball and marble are at the top of the incline plane they have a certain amount of PE.
Kinetic Energy- Kinetic energy is how much energy an object has due to motion and is calculated by multiplying 1/2 mass and velocity squared. When the car is moving down the ramp it has a certain amount of KE. Th change in PE, the change in KE, and work are all equal.
Momentum- Momentum is how much energy a moving object carries with it and is calculated by multiplying mass and velocity. When the marble rolls down the multiple inclined planes, it has momentum.
Acceleration- Acceleration is the rate of change in an object's motion and is calculated by dividing the change in time and the change in velocity. As the foosball rolls down the ramp it accelerates.