Our

Rube Goldberg project

Historical Origins
Rube Goldberg was born on July 4, 1883 in San
Francisco, California. engineering

He graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in When Rube Goldberg was 24, he moved to New York
to pursue passion for cartoon-writing.

He drew cartoons for 5 dierent newspapers. He was eventually syndicated in 1915, which began
his nationwide fame.

After his syndication he did many cartoon series. They

included the machines that now bear his name.

Shown on the right is our initial sketch of the project

 In the beginning, we decide to use a wheel and axle We then replaced the wheel with a dual pulley system We also removed the dominoes on the top, and replaced them on the
bottom level

For the longest time, the screw was a dicult part of our experiment. We went through dierent types of strings, because many kept fraying and
breaking before the experiment even started.

The wood had lots of knots

 The rst thing we did was cutting our board in half We nailed our rst half to four pieces of wood The wood had many knots, so they came out when we tried to nail them We eventually glued them Our nal result was ..a coee table

On the right is a picture of our schematic, which is what we currently have on our project.

Step 1

Our rst step was to raise a lever. We did this by rolling a ball down a diagonal surface. The tennis ball rolls, landing it on the unweighted side of the lever.

Step 2

When the rst lever raised due to step 1, the second lever placed on the end of the rst raises. When its raised, the marble rolls down on its own.

Step 3

When the marble rolls o the lever, it rolls down into the drilled hole. It then makes its way through a metal screw

Step 4

As it ends through the screw, it goes through a makeshift styrofoam funnel.

Step 5

The marble leaves the screw. It enters the styrofoam cup we used as an inclined plane.

Step 6

The marble hits the dominoes The dominoes are knocked over.

Step 7

Once the dominoes fall, they knock over a golf ball. The ball falls on the pair of scissors.

Step 8

The golf ball falls on a pair of scissors. The scissors (hopefully) will snip due to the weight and downward force of the golf ball.

Step 9

The string that is cut is holding up a 500 gram weight. As it is cut, the gram drops on a stapler. The gram has enough mass to staple the paper in the stapler.

Step 10

The string that is cut is attached to a weight. As it is cut, the weight raises the paper.