In our group we tested the question, how does the type of material in a fire starter affect the peak temperature and the time it takes to burn out? My role in the group was the "Tester" and the the research manager.
Rube Goldberg Project
A Rube Goldberg is unnecessarily complicated steps that complete a simple action. Rube Goldberg was a cartoonist in the mid 1900s. Our goal for the project was to create a rube that utilized some basic physics concepts. The concepts that we implemented was a pulley, an incline plane and the counter weighted wheels. For my partner’s and my rube we made a rube that's final task was to paint a picture with splatter paint. Our rube worked (⅔ times). The rube that we created had about 12-15 steps, my favorite step was the final step but I also like the creative ness of the weighted wheels. Our first step was a Was a marble rolling in to a lever cortive thing that released the rice. The rice then weight down the container it fell into lifting the other side up. The other side released a nut attached to a string, that string un winded from around a pole and hit dominos. The last domino knock a counter weighted wheel that knock another then knocking another. The last of the three wheels knocked sheet of wood that then knock dominos falling on each other until they hit a ball. The ball was hit off a switch releasing the air pressure from the cannon. In one step we have a cup be weighted down by rice we had a problem with this because the rice kept getting stuck. We also have a huge problem with the nut getting knocked down easier than it should. Something that we use a lot of dominoes which transferred energy a lot so if we didn't have those then we would not have a working rube. The funnel that dropped the rice was the most challenging, we fixed it by totally ripping it apart and remaking it.