Guiding+Activity+(Matt)

Guiding Questions:

How can energy be transformed? How do you know when energy transfered? What happens when energy changes forms?

Synopsis:

Rube Goldberg was a famous cartoonist and inventor of crazy contraptions to solve everyday simple problems. With his creations he would preform simple tasks in complex ways, such as using a napkin by having the soup spoon pull a string which triggers a spoon to throw a cracker which makes a parrot take flight, who's perch tilts bbs into a bucket that pulls a string that ignites a lighter that shoots a rocket that is attached to a sickle which cuts another string attached to a pendulum holding a napkin. His ideas where zany to say the least. Students love the novelty of his creations. In each step of his creations energy is present in one of it's many forms and the entire machines he drew are a series of transfers of energy. Objective:

In this lesson students will create their own mini Rube Goldberg machine to link up with other group's machines to preform a simple classroom task.

Lesson:

-Show the students [| "How Compound Machines Work: The Cartoons of Rube Goldberg"] from DiscoveryEducation and [|"Rube Goldberg Failures"]

-Ask the students what mundane school room task they think they should accomplish. (simple like opening the door or turning off the light switch)

-Divide students up in to 3-4 person groups and have them brainstorm ideas they think would be feasible to create in real life limiting them to a budget of no more than $5 to encourage them to use things they already have.

-Students should sketch their ideas.

-Create a rubric to measure success allowing for multiple failures like the mythbusters example using student input.

- Order the groups so they know who's project theirs will start and who they have to get their energy from.

- Facilitate building of the project.

- Students should create a final drawing of the machine and label places where different types of energy are and where they are being transfered.

-Discuss with students how they knew energy was being transfered. (things move, sounds are made things light up or heat up, etc.)

Extensions:

-Students can make one giant drawing of all of the groups machines working together and trace the transfers of energy.

-Students can graph the number of times each type of energy is used and how many time parts of the machine fail.

Resources:

Goldberg, Rube. "Rube Goldberg Gallery." Rube Goldberg. Section 101, 2012. Web. 3 Jun 2012. .

Rube Goldberg Failures. Prod. Beyond Entertainment. Science Channel, 2010. Discovery Education. Web. 3 June 2012. .