Life in the Cold: Surviving and Thriving in a Winter Environment
For this project we learned about heat transfer and absorption. Using what we learned, we created our own experiment with a group to survive in the cold. We also learned how to ask testable questions. We learned how to create and experiment and collect meaningful data. Other thing we learned were calculating heat with absorption in water, heat transfer through conduction, convection, and radiation. My group wanted to know how respiratory rate would affect the freezing on melting speed of snow. I was the data manger. I collected all the data and wrote about it in the results section.
Rube Goldberg
For the rube goldberg we had to have it fit in a 2ft. x 2ft. x 3ft space. It had to have atleast 12 steps and 2 simple machines. The rube also needs to last for 20 seconds and raise or project something for 12 inches. Our rube had 11 steps and lasted for 7 seconds. It has one simple machine which is a wheel and axle. It starts when you put a ball in a piece of PVC pipe. Next, it would drop into a funnel and into another PVC pipe. Then. it would drop into another funnel and onto a slingshot. The slingshot would launch the trian and the train would hit the dominos. The dominos would fall and hit a pin that prevented the wheel from spining. Once it knocked the pin down the wheel would spin, droping a wieght onto the toaster starting it. Other than missing a couple things our rube meets all of the requirements. The rube we made makes toast, and it performed pretty well. It was a pain in the neck to make though. Especially the wheel and axel bit, the harest part was getting the wheel and axle in a workable spot. I tried attaching it to the post then behind it and finally I used super glue and stuck it to the floor of the Rube. I did the majority of the analysis and I built the whole thing. I took it home and finished it and fixed everything. The most important concept of our rube was the elastic potential energy part because if that doesn't work the whole thing doesn’t work. To show elasitic potenial energy we made a slingshot that would launch a trian into the dominos and activate the rest of the rube. The exhibition was okay, we hit a few bumps and our rube didn't work every time. Otherwise the exhibition went pretty well.