Group #2, Blog 1

Michael Lohr, Hunter Gilbert, Landon Lopez, and Michael Henneberger

Mr. Katz / Mr. Howard

Physics

April 20, 2015

Blog Post One

A) Who is in your group and why did you guys decide to be a group together? The people that are in our group are; Michael Lohr, Michael Henneberger, Landon Lopez, and Hunter Gilbert. We decided to become a group because we are all friends and one of us has already created a Rube Goldberg design. We trust each other to do what we are supposed to do for this project.   

B) What is your initial plan to fulfill the objective of launching a ball a given distance? First we will release a marble into a funnel, the marble will then go down the funnel and though a tube. It will then hit a row of dominoes that will create a chain reaction and cause another marble to go down a marble track. After going down the track the marble will hit a lacrosse ball, the lacrosse ball will then fall into a cup which is hung by a pulley. This lacrosse ball will act as a counter weight therefore hitting the top of a see saw. By hitting the see saw it will cause the other side to fly up therefore hitting a pencil which will rotate to hit another marble which will go down a ramp and go through a turnaround tube. It will then go on a piece of ply wood and hit a wall, the marble will fall into another funnel and travel down another tube and by the force of collision with a car it makes the toy car go down a track. Then the car hits a switch on a fan that blows on a car with a sail attached to it. The car will travel to a set distance and hit a piece of ply wood and release the golf ball which will land on the target.  

 C) What challenges do you anticipate facing? Some of the challenges we anticipate to encounter are team work and listening to everyone’s ideas and using those ideas in our project. Another obstacle we anticipate is getting the ball to launch and hit one of the desired targets.