A morning meeting has inspired a quote brought up by Rob a while ago. I feel that it represents our experiment fairly well. “People always ask, What is your greatest failure? I always have the same answer - We’re working on it right now, it’s gonna be awesome!”
We’ve been discussing Newton’s laws of physics in science for a while now. While trying to get a sense of the laws, we started playing with hot wheels. After a week or two of playing, we were finally asked to make an experiment out of it. The potentials were limitless as long as it applied to Newton’s laws.
As we played around (Tatiana, Sydney, John, and I) with the tables and small ramps, we couldn’t help but look over at the other groups. Their project had parts hanging from the ceiling, bending ramps, gaps where the cars partially flew. All they were missing were a jet pack for their cars. And here we were with a piece of cardboard propped up by a textbook. So of course we then dove into a crazy plan to make a sort of Rube Goldbergesk sort of machine. Oh and why not make it everlasting. That was the plan. And at the time, it seemed perfectly realistic. After the first five minutes though, we gave up. We had to eliminate one of our aspects.
We decided that we’d just try and make a simple course, but have it continue on without needing any external force. We needed to design a course with bumps in it, small enough that the car could go over it without trouble, but big enough to add some extra momentum when going down. After a day of trying to design our course on tables we had a thought. What if we could make a simple course, be more efficient, and look as cool as the other group. Lets build it in the air. We created a circle with the hot wheels track and held it up by paper clips and yarn on the sealing. We thought all of our problems had been solved. Hallelujah, we have an experiment! Of course that had to go all wrong as well. The track did not want to stay flat. It bent at an angle that was impossible for a car to stay on. We tried taping, and piping, and popsicle sticks oh my, but nothing worked. Once again we were in the position of having nothing done, while the other groups were flying high, in a literal sense as well as metaphorical.
So we finally decided to make our experiment the fail of experiments. We realized that the tracks we had weren’t able to be manipulated in the way that we wanted. What we were planning would have needed a homemade course, and although we finally reached enough of an understanding to construct such a thing, we didn’t have the time or the dedication for it. We may be able to go into our Rube Goldberg machines with one design though.
Just because we never got an end result, doesn’t mean that it was an actual failed lesson. Just a bum experiment. I think we might have actually learned more from screwing up so many times and having to redo things, then we would have if things had gone accordingly. I feel like I’ve come out of this with a whole new understanding of not only Newton’s laws, but other aspects of science too like momentum. So I don’t think I’d change anything. Sure it would have been nice to have had an end product, but all of the group brain storming and constructing was rather fun, and I don’t wish to take it back. I think that now when we move on to our Rube Goldberg machines, we may even have an advantage. Because all in all, this failure was the biggest success.
