NORTH SALEM, N.Y. - “Okay, here we go,” said Gavin as he carefully tapped the toy car, starting its roll down the ruler’s incline plane. His partner Ryan watched tensely as the car hit a craft stick lever, launching a marble down a second ruler ramp. The marble careened into a bouncy ball, knocking it off the table and into a waiting box on the floor and setting off loud celebratory cheers around the classroom.
In Sandy McDonough’s seventh-grade STEM class, students transformed ordinary classroom materials into extraordinary mechanical marvels inspired by the whimsical inventions of American cartoonist Rube Goldberg.
“We’re trying to solve a common everyday problem with a ridiculous machine,” said Chris as she constructed a pulley system to lift a pen from the floor.
The assignment required students to design contraptions using three simple machines, like levers, pulleys, or inclined planes, navigate three directions, and complete a simple task. Armed with an assortment of wooden blocks, craft sticks, marbles, and string, students took on the creative engineering exercise.
Madison’s group initially aimed to create a machine that would turn off an alarm clock but learned the importance of pivoting when their original design didn’t work. “It’s a process of fail and retry, fail and retry, just keep on trying,” she said. When a ping pong ball proved too slow, they switched to a marble to activate a pulley to lift a pair of eyeglasses.
McDonough sees deeper value in the exercise. “Developing patience and persistence allows them to eventually be successful,” she said. “These are the Habits of Mind we use most often in science. It took critical thinking and creativity to make sure they fulfill all the requirements.”
Articles courtesy of North Salem Central School District.
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