Rube Goldberg

This is my Rube Goldberg project, which I created for a science club project.

My answers for the Make-To-Learn Contest:

What did you make?
I made a Rube Goldberg, which consists of a set of chain reactions. The materials used were the surroundings (a table, chair, and stairs), textbooks, over 40 dominoes, two types of balls, cardboard tubes, and cards. The purpose of the machine was to knock over a card house.
The project steps:
First, I knocked down dominoes on top of the table, which caused a tennis ball to roll down a series of tubes over a chair and onto the floor. Then, the ball rolled on the carpet, ricocheting off some textbooks to knock down one of three possible domino lines, joining into a long line of dominoes. Those dominoes knocked a bouncy ball down a few stairs to collapse a card house.

How did you make it?
This project was created with my friend as a science club project. We had various ideas throughout the creation process, such as using a phone's vibration to set off the reaction, but we scrapped those plans through trial and error. I supplied the materials to build the Rube Goldberg and provided the basic idea for the project, and my friend provided her house and other ideas. I set up the tubes, card house, and the majority of the dominoes.

Where did you make it?
I constructed this at my friend's house because she had a large living room. We needed somewhere with multiple levels, such as the table and the steps. This connected my extracurricular interests of creating things and science, which produced a very amusing and entertaining result.

What did you learn?
The primary lesson I learned was patience. Setting up over forty dominoes took over an hour, and I kept having to replace them because of the dog or a stray nudge from a shoe. It was surprising to watch the final result, because it was mainly luck that the bouncy ball hit the card house accurately enough to knock it down. If I did this project again, I would include variations of materials I used. The aspect I am most proud of in this project is that we managed to film the video completely, with all the dominoes lined up before we started.