An Automatic Garbage Dumper - Rube Goldberg style
This was an exercise that kept me stressed for days. I rolled on the floor and even my daughter went mad at me. But in the end we were all very happy and proud because we had build exactly what we wanted.
I had the idea from a previous scamper exercise. It was a modified garbage basket that can dump directly into a garbage truck. I liked it and this was a great opportunity to "prototype" it.
The first time we came together as a group, we shared ideas and everyone liked it. We broke it down to the required minimum number of stages/actions and scketched it also.
When building, we focussed on one stage at the time. When connecting/joining the stages together, some ajustments were needed.
Stages
- phone rings (like an alarm/reminder to take out garbage)
- Phone falls and pulls hand of the doll
- the doll releases "garbage", the marble
- The "garbage" (marble) moves through a hose to the garbage bucket.
- Before entering the bucket, it swings a doll
- The doll lets down a lever.
- This lever pushes a tennis ball to fall
- the tennis ball pulls the garbage truck
- when the garbage truck arrives, pushes a bottle to fall.
- the bottle pulls a pvc pipe that hoists and rotates the garbage bucket to the garbage truck.
- the botle also pulls a lock from a hanging paperroll filled whit dough as weight.
- This paperroll pulls a rope that dumps the bucket.
- The garbage ( marble ) falls in the "parked" garbage truck.
From this excercise we have once again learned to be creative and solve "big and complex problems".
Problems can be broken down to smaller parts. Than focus on solving this smaller problems one a time.
This is also a great excercise for teachers, because according to the standards, a teacher must be a great problem solver.
