Simple Machines

     We began this project with the goal of turning off an iPhone alarm using a stylus. With some experimentation, we realized that the stylus needed a certain amount of force applied to it and had to make contact with the iPhone screen for a specific amount of time. We concluded that it would be easier to simply use a typical digital alarm clock in our machine. The next challenge that we faced was how to dump the basket of marbles into the funnel. We went through many ideas as a team and eventually settled with taking out an unnecessary step to make

this part of the machine easier. We used to have dominoes which we would knock over using the well-known Lightning McQueen. We removed these extra dominoes and allowed Lightning McQueen to hit a supporting piece of wood beneath the marble-filled basket. The basket would then be unbalanced and would fall forward, sending the marbles into the funnel. The following

challenge had a simple solution. We needed to set an alarm on the alarm clock, but the clock had no alarm setting. It did, however, have a radio button. We solved this problem by changing the purpose of our machine. Instead of turning off an alarm clock, it would turn off the radio.

     As the machine moved toward completion, we faced another challenge: the box that the second tennis ball was in was too big and was allowing the ball to fall to the side of its target. The ball was wedging itself between the side of the box and the support tube that holds the pencil

to complete the machine. Our first solution was to make the box smaller. This would help because the tennis ball would have less room and therefore, less opportunity to miss the target. Our second, better solution was to use the tube that the tennis ball came in because the ball

would have no other option than to fall onto its one and only target. We attempted the first of the two ideas and with the failure of our first “solution” we tried the second one. There was no reason that we could think of to explain why this step in our project didn't work. The pencil was positioned directly on top of the button, the PVC pipe was secure around the pencil, and the

weight of the ball (and its contents) was enough to push down the button even without its kinetic energy added. In a perfect physics world, we would have been successful. We do not know why (possibly student error), but for some unknown reason the machine failed and the radio was

not turned off.

     Because the main goal of our machine failed, we needed to make some major changes in our system and process. We decided to make a new purpose for our machine; the new goal of the machine is to squeeze toothpaste out onto a toothbrush. Me managed to redesign the machine so that only one step at the end had to be altered from its original version to fit the new purpose of the project. The whole machine stays the same except for the final steps. Instead of having a

box, a tennis ball, and a radio, we have a funnel, a marble, and a mouse-trap. The marble falls into the funnel and down a PVC pipe onto one end of a mouse-trap. The mouse-trap snaps onto a small tube of toothpaste which squirts onto a toothbrush. This system seems much more promising than the alarm clock or radio process.  

     Even though the machine cannot work on its own, it is a good example of energy transfers and simple machines put to use.  The machine only needs a little bit of "guidance" every other try.