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    Crazy Contraptions: Build Rube Goldberg Machines that Swoop, Spin, Stack, and Swivel: with Hands-On Engineering Activities
    Crazy Contraptions: Build Rube Goldberg Machines that Swoop, Spin, Stack, and Swivel: with Hands-On Engineering Activities
    Crazy Contraptions: Build Rube Goldberg Machines that Swoop, Spin, Stack, and Swivel: with Hands-On Engineering Activities
    Ebook233 pages1 hour

    Crazy Contraptions: Build Rube Goldberg Machines that Swoop, Spin, Stack, and Swivel: with Hands-On Engineering Activities

    By Laura Perdew and Micah Rauch

    ()

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    About this ebook

    An exciting book about the chain reaction world of Rube Goldberg for middle schoolers, including 25 engineering design projects that get middle schoolers applying the laws of physics to their own inventions as they learn the scientific principles behind the actions and reactions they create.

    Why use a simple hand motion to wipe your mouth when you can build a machine to do it for you? Toppling dominoes, rolling marbles, racing balloon cars, springing catapults, and whizzing zip-lines are all elements used to build Rube Goldberg machines in Crazy Contraptions: Build Rube Goldberg Machines that Swoop, Spin, Stack, and Swivel with Hands-On Engineering Activities. The book introduces kids ages 9-12 (and beyond!) to the wacky machines designed by Goldberg, which were based on complicated chain reactions used to accomplish very simple, sometimes ridiculous, tasks.

    • Through contraptions, the book discusses the basics of physics, including force, motion, and work. Each chapter introduces one of the six simple machines and how they can be used in Rube Goldberg contraptions—inclined planes, levers, wheels and axles, wedges, screws, and pulleys.

    • Kids are challenged to design, build, and evaluate dozens of increasingly complex contraptions that do things like unscrew a lid, turn the page of a book, and pop a balloon.

    • Projects use materials already in most homes—reimagining and repurposing everyday items, as well as mining the recycling!

    • Contraption hints, essential questions, short sidebars, and links to online primary resources help readers learn the basics of force, work, motion, and simple machines, while exploring their creativity as they design and build their own crazy contraptions.


    About the Build It Engineering set and Nomad Press
    Crazy Contraptions is part of a set of two Build It Engineering books that explore the engineering technology behind our daily lives. The other titles in this series is Bots! Robotic Engineering with Hands-On Makerspace Activities

    Nomad Press books in the Build It series integrate content with participation. Combining content with inquiry-based projects stimulates learning and makes it active and alive. Nomad’s unique approach simultaneously grounds kids in factual knowledge while allowing them the space to be curious, creative, and critical thinkers.

    All books are leveled for Guided Reading level and Lexile and align with Common Core State Standards and Next Generation Science Standards. All titles are available in paperback, hardcover, and ebook formats.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherNomad Press
    Release dateOct 8, 2019
    ISBN9781619308244
    Crazy Contraptions: Build Rube Goldberg Machines that Swoop, Spin, Stack, and Swivel: with Hands-On Engineering Activities
    Author

    Laura Perdew

    Susan B. Katz is a National Board Certified Teacher and bilingual educator with over 30 years classroom expertise. She is the author of more than 50 children’s books, including over a dozen STEAM titles. Susan studied environmental science at the University of Michigan, School of Natural Resources and the Environment, and worked in a Costa Rican rainforest.

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      Book preview

      Crazy Contraptions - Laura Perdew

      More engineering titles in the Build It Yourself series.

      Check out more titles at www.nomadpress.net

      Nomad Press

      A division of Nomad Communications

      10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

      Copyright © 2019 by Nomad Press. All rights reserved.

      No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review or for limited educational use.

      The trademark Nomad Press and the Nomad Press logo are trademarks of Nomad Communications, Inc.

      Educational Consultant, Marla Conn

      Questions regarding the ordering of this book should be addressed to

      Nomad Press

      2456 Christian St., White River Junction, VT 05001

      www.nomadpress.net

      Printed in the United States.

      CONTENTS

      Timeline

      Introduction

         Meet Rube Goldberg

      Chapter 1

         Things You Should Know Before You Get Started

      Chapter 2

         Play With Inclined Planes

      Chapter 3

         Looking at Levers

      Chapter 4

         Whoa! Wheels and Axles!

      Chapter 5

         Plucky Pulleys

      Chapter 6

         Wild About Wedges

      Chapter 7

         Savvy About Screws

      Chapter 8

         Go Big!

      Glossary • Metric Conversions •

      Resources • Essential Questions • Index

      Interested in Primary Sources? Look for this icon.

      Use a smartphone or tablet app to scan the QR code and explore more! Photos are also primary sources because a photograph takes a picture at the moment something happens. You can find a list of URLs on the Resources page. If the QR code doesn’t work, try searching the internet with the Keyword Prompts to find other helpful sources.

      Rube Goldberg

      TIMELINE

      Introduction

      MEET RUBE

      GOLDBERG

      Have you ever watched a line of dominoes fall? Have you ever played the game Mouse Trap? Do you like to think of complex ways to accomplish simple tasks?

      You might love doing Rube Goldberg–like projects without even knowing what they’re called! This is what we call activities that involve creating a series of chain reactions to perform a specific task. And not just any kind of task: one that would be far easier to simply do with your two hands, but which ends up being a lot of fun when you design an entire machine around the task.

      Sound crazy? Let’s meet the man who started this craze!

      ESSENTIAL QUESTION

      What was Rube Goldberg’s contribution to engineering?

      WORDS TO KNOW

      Rube Goldberg: a person whose name is used as an adjective. It describes accomplishing by complex means what seemingly could be done simply.

      WORDS TO KNOW

      engineer: someone who uses math, science, and creativity to solve problems and build things.

      contraption: a newfangled or complicated device.

      device: a piece of equipment meant to do certain things, such as a phone.

      chain reaction: a series of events in which one action causes the next one and so on.

      convoluted: complex and difficult to follow.

      pulley: a simple machine consisting of a wheel with a grooved rim that a rope or chain is pulled through to help lift up a load.

      groove: a line cut into a surface, often made in order to guide something such as rope along the rim of a wheel in a pulley system.

      simple machine: a tool that uses one movement to complete work.

      catapult: a device used to hurl or launch something.

      MEET RUBE

      More than a hundred years ago, a man named Reuben Lucius Goldberg (1883–1970) was born on July 4, 1883, in San Francisco, California. Who knew this child would have a profound effect on the way millions of people thought about engineering? Who knew he would grow up to make so many people laugh and wonder?

      Early on, Rube was interested in art. By age eight, his interest had turned into a passion. Rube loved creating line drawings and tracing pictures from newspapers and magazines. Rube’s father wasn’t too keen on his son’s interest in art, though. So, when Rube grew up, he went to college to become an engineer. He graduated from UC Berkeley in 1904 with an engineering degree. Afterward, he worked for the City of San Francisco’s Water and Sewer Department designing pipe systems.

      Rube Goldberg with his wife and children in 1929. Members of Goldberg’s family still run his estate.

      After only six months, he quit. Instead, Rube Goldberg started working for a San Francisco newspaper. While he was there, he submitted cartoons and drawings to the newspaper’s editorial staff, hoping to get published. But Goldberg often discovered his cartoons in the editor’s trash bin!

      Then, one day, he was given the chance to sketch athletes for the sports section. The newspaper staff soon discovered they sold more papers when there were more pictures. Why do you think this was?

      Once the paper began running a color cartoon section, Goldberg finally had a place for his cartoons. His career had begun. Eventually, he moved across the country to New York City, New York. That’s where his work as a cartoonist became even more popular and he became famous.

      Goldberg was a great cartoonist, but he became a household name because of the elaborate, overly complicated, hilarious, crazy contraptions he drew. These contraptions were extremely complicated chain reactions that, in the end, performed very simple tasks. Some of his wacky contraptions include an automatic back-scratcher, an alarm clock, a self-opening umbrella, a simplified pencil sharpener, and a fly swatter. He also created an orange squeezer for fresh orange juice in the morning and even had an elaborate plan for pulling an olive out of a jar.

      The contraptions Rube Goldberg invented were funny not only because they were so convoluted, but because they often included unusual parts. He used animals in the designs. He also used springs, pulleys and other simple machines, rockets, feathers, melting ice, escalators, fire, catapults, and more.

      This short video will give you a quick introduction to the world of Rube Goldberg machines. Have you ever built a Rube Goldberg machine before? Did it meet your objective?

      Rube Goldberg legacy Vimeo

      WORDS TO KNOW

      legacy: something handed down from the past that has a long-lasting impact.

      STEM: an acronym that stands for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. STEAM is STEM plus art.

      energy: the ability or power to do work or cause change.

      work: in physics, when a force acts on an object to move it some distance.

      physics: the study of physical forces, including matter, energy, and

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