Sam Atchison   

       The Rube Goldberg project was one of my favorite projects last semester. Although it was stressful and demanding in some parts it turned out to be a very well presented exhibition with a good product, so I'll start with the exhibition and work my way back. Our rube worked really well and used a many of the simple machines.  My first step was the second one on my group's rube it was a combination of 2 of the simple machines, it was a lever on an inclined plane that dropped a marble into a bucket that pulled a pulley that was my second step. This was used to show the principles of physics the best examples of these are Potential energy, Kinetic energy, and Inertia. Potential energy was used in the spiral falling witch the potential energy was there when it was sitting on the shelf and transformed into Kinetic when it was hit off and falling. A good example of kinetic is the ball that hit the spiral off the shelf. And finally the blade that cut the line is a good example of inertia because if the blade was just laid upon the line it wouldn't cut but with the support hit out from under it and the blade having time to fall and gain Inertia it was able to cut through the line.   
       In the BBK (Building Background Knowledge) of the project, we learned some crucial equations for calculating Potential and Kinetic energy. We used this in our Rubes to calculate the force of objects on the Rube. An example of this is at the start of a rube you drop a 7.0-gram steel ball 50 centimeters into a tiny bucket on a pulley system. Calculate the potential energy (PE) for the beginning step of your Rube.
First, you had to convert the centimeters to meters which equal .5m and then the grams to kilogram which was 0.007kg then u completed the equation Potential Energy (j)=m*g*h or mass times gravity times height. 
0.5m*9.81m/s2*0.007kg=0.034335J        
The example is, the steel ball lands in the tiny bucket it has a velocity of 45cm/s.The second equation is for Kinetic energy which is KE (j)=½ mv2 Since I already converted what I need to know I will just do the equation.
.45m2=.2025*.007kg=.0014175/2=.00070875j
       These equations have been crucial to physics are easily applied to our own projects. 
 And here we conclude with the beginning, to start this process we created a three-step rube. We had to first, figure out what out rube would do. Our group decided to launch a rocket. For that, we had to use 3 simple machines which were a pulley, an inclined plane, and a lever. My soft skills this project I had to work on leadership. My group was pretty productive but some of the members were easily distracted and I had to work on my leadership role to keep them on track to create a better product. I also grew most in this because I am not usually a leader in project and this was a new skill and I found out that I really liked this role and I have to use this in the future.