Wacky Machines

Fourth grade scientists have been designing and building simple machines in Adel Collins class this month as the culmination of their unit on energy. Inspired by the wacky chain-reaction style machines created by cartoonist Rube Goldberg, students worked in small groups to design a machine that uses a series of energy transfers to accomplish a defined task like popping a balloon, adding milk to a cereal bowl, or switching on a light.

Students began by studying videos of other simple machines in action and noticing the different kinds of energy, energy transfers, and transformations that work together to achieve the machine’s desired outcome. Then they learned about the components of a simple machine that they might want to incorporate in their design: levers, pulleys, a wedge, an inclined plane, wheels and axles, and screws.

Students brainstormed the kind of machine their group would like to create and then created a plan, identifying all the materials they would need and the energy transfers and transformations their design would incorporate. Students spent a week designing, building, and testing their machines, working through material and design flaws like a bump in an inclined plane that causes a ball to bounce the wrong way or a series of dominoes that must be precisely aligned to knock a paper into a waste basket.

On testing day, students gathered around each design while the team explained the components of their design and the energy transfers they were hoping to produce in each step to make their machine work. Click here to watch a 4th grade simple machine in action!

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