Today in class I was again working with Catherine to plan our Rube Goldberg Machine. This is what we came up with for it:

What we plan to happen is to have a set of marbles (we haven't determined exactly how many will be needed yet) roll down a slope, and with the help of the gained momentum, roll back up a slope a little way before rolling onto a "see-saw" style contraption, that has a container attached to the end to collect the marbles. Once the container is heavy enough (presumably when all of the marbles have rolled in), the see-saw will drop and "crash" through a sheet of baking paper before continuing to fall and hit another see-saw. It will hit the see-saw with enough force that it will tip the other end, "shooting" a container of confetti into the air.

What do we plan on using to make this machine?

To make our Rube Goldberg machine we plan on using:

- A "set" of marbles (amount of marbles to be in a set not yet determined)

- A container of confetti

- Baking paper stretched over a "something"

- A yoghurt container (or something simular) to catch marbles

The existence of extraterrestrial life is a highly debated topic, but personally I believe that with the size of the universe, it would be near impossible for there NOT to be other intelligent life forms.

The fact that the universe is very large beside, there is also some very out of the ordinary radio signals etc. that have been received over the past few decades. One very interesting event was when there where 3 mysterious signals received from the same general area of space by the SETI project (read more about it here). This and numerous other pieces of information has led me to believe that intelligent extraterrestrial life forms exist off Earth.

Today in class Catherine and I investigated the force and acceleration that would be produced/needed for a rube goulberg machine. Our ideas for a machine is to begin with a pendulum, which then hits a ball (that is being held in place on a ramp with string) with enough force to break the string realising the ball. We had the ball on the slope held by string instead of having it on a platform so that the only initial force that would be needed to move the ball would be that required to break the string. The ball then rolls down a slope (slope = 50cm long, and has an angle of 45 degreed) and falls into a bucked. The bucket then falls, tips a seesaw and shoots confetti into the air.