The 9th grade Physical Science class has been working on Rube Goldberg projects.  Rube Goldberg was an engineer and cartoonist.  He became a household name through his comics which depicted hilarious contraptions that followed a chain reaction and displayed a transfer of energy to accomplish work.  His inventions used every day materials and household items.

Ashley is our one 9th grader this year at the dorm.  She came up with a simple design, yet complicated series of tasks that must work together, for her Goldberg project.  The work that her invention was designed to accomplish was dumping paint out of a cup.  Ashley implemented several different transfers of energy:  inclined plane, wedge, wheel & axle, and lever.  Through this process of energy transfer, Ashley’s contraption was able to dump paint out of the cup as intended.

I can imagine a cartoon drawn by Mr. Goldberg, using Ashley’s design….  A younger sister has a typical pesky, older brother.  She rigs up a system in which when his bedroom door opens, he is covered in pink paint with no time to shower before heading off to middle school.  Oh what fun!