The rube goldberg project is a really fun way to create your own puzzle. Often times we complete puzzles or buy them ourselves and are intrigued by the simple steps involved in making the puzzle more complex. Creating a rube goldberg is a great practice of resourcefulness and working with young people to see how much they do have access to as oppose to what they do not, a growth mindset. Developing a rube goldberg project is great for analytical and time management skills if given a deadline for completion.
Rube Goldberg Project is best done with little instruction. In previous lessons students were constricted to size dimensions and displaying various energy conversions. These parameters can be a time frame, material requirements, or appearance. The materials used are whatever is most accessible and ideally reuseable for other groups and other science projects. The project can be done in groups or individually, groups allows for crative collaboration and advanced problem solving amongst the learners.
The best aspect to the rube goldberg is the hands on learning. Building an aparatus with an intentional purpose allows for students to express knowledge in a way that is not often realistic because of the time required to complete and assess the rube goldberg. Students were engaged and excited for the use of new power tools and observing different types of screws and wood. The interest within the details brought an exciting energy to the classroom.
Suggested Building Materials: Plank wood, Dominos, Marbles, D-Batteries, Plastic Fans, plastic pipes, wood scraps, cut plastic pipes, golf balls, tennis balls, colorful decorative foam/paper
Suggested Tools: Power Drill, Circular Saw, screws, hammer and nails, hot glue, hot glue guns
Rube Goldberg Examples:
The balloon did not pop this round but the design was impeccable.
Chemistry With Brandy 
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