This week in Design Lab, we finished building our Rube Goldberg machine! A Rube Goldberg machine is a machine that is started by a human doing something, which sets off a chain reaction, which ends in a simple task being completed, like pouring a cup of water or dropping a block. Our’s was started by someone sling-shooting a marble, which sets off dominoes, which lifts a pulley, which sets a marble rolling on a track, which sets off more dominoes, which set off another marble, which sets off a pulley, which starts a cart rolling, which knocks down a weighted cup, which knocks down colorful towers, and also pulls a ruler, which sets off dominoes, which starts a marble rolling, which sets off a mousetrap, which causes marbles to fall into a bag, which falls, and reveals a sign that says “JCDSRI Rocks!” and is splatter painted and signed by the whole school. As that happens, someone off to the side pulls a string, which activates a confetti launcher that we made. Sadly, but not unexpectedly, when we tried it out it didn’t work. So we just set it off manually when it didn’t work. Both Lashon groups worked together, even though we were working on it separately. It took about two months to complete because we only have Design Lab for 50 minutes a week. So altogether it was worked on for an hour and 40 minutes a week. I think that it was a great way to work together and make all of our ideas work, and I think that everyone worked hard together and had fun.
