Combined TAS and Science Project

Last term Santa Sophia’s Stage 4 students were learning about Engineered Systems, which is a series of components that work together to perform a function.

We learnt this through creating our own Rube Golberg machine which was a fantastic way to demonstrate our learning of materials and their components. We also had to list the different types of forces, motion and energy.>

This project required us to make our own Rube Goldberg Machine in groups of three. We had to demonstrate force, motion and energy in our Rube Goldberg machine. We learnt our surface knowledge for example what force, motion and energy is or what our materials were made of. We then designed our Rube Goldberg machine and decided on our materials. We thought of different obstacles and our end result - what we wanted to accomplish.

I really liked making our Rube Goldberg Machine and how it was a combined project, as we learnt about a lot of aspects in both Science and TAS areas and were able to show and demonstrate our learning in the Rube Goldberg Machine. I also liked how we got to bring our own materials from home and experiment with our Rube Goldberg Machine.

I was able to learn a lot in the two subjects. In Science, I learnt about household materials and what they were made of. I also learnt about compounds, elements, metals, non-metals and metalloids. In TAS I learnt about the different types of forces, for example, gravitational force, contact, frictional force and tension. In both aspects, I learnt about how a Rube Goldberg machine works and how it functions. For instance, one component needs to start the following component and so on until it reaches the end goal.

By: Erica Pisani Year 7 2019