The purpose of this project was to learn about simple machines and mechanical advantage, and then use that information to help us raise miniature obelisks with our group's own simple machines. To reach this goal we first learned how the Egyptians raised them by watching a documentary the day after our last exhibition. Then we learned about the scientific definition of work. (force x distance) We also learned on the same day, the question, "What are simple machines?" by filling out a packet and watching a short powerpoint presentation from Ms. Ali. Then Ms. Melissa (our director) taught us about hieroglyphics so we could paint our cartouches (#3) onto the obelisks generously made by Mr. Hernandez at the fire station. Next, we moved on to mechanical advantage. We first learned the formulas for levers, then ramps, then wheel and axles, and finally pulleys. (those are the 4 types of simple machines) After that we created scaled drawings of our creations and learned about tool safety.Then we started building our machines and painting our third draft of our critiqued and ready cartouches onto the obelisks. And finally, we calculated the mechanical advantage of our now compound machines and set up for exhibition.
What I learned
I myself learned so much in this project that my brain capacity is overloading! Such as the question you may be wondering right now, "What in the universe are simple machines?" Well simple machines are objects that use force to move something a distance, or they do work. However, they do not reduce the amount of work, they just spread it out into a more manageable form by doing work itself. There are 4 different types of simple machines: levers, ramps, wheel and axels, and pulleys. Well, as I said before, in this project we had to build simple machines to help us raise obelisks. But we first had to come up with an idea. My group decided to use only materials that were available to the Egyptians. So we built a large ramp, pulled the obelisk up the ramp with rope upside down until it fell into a pit of sand, then we used another piece of rope to pull it up straight while we buried the bottom of the obelisk to keep it from falling over. After we built and tested our machine we calculated the mechanical advantage. Mechanical advantage is a way to quantify the benefit of a simple machine. But it is calculated differently for each type. Here are all of the formulas:
Levers- Length of input arm divided by length of output arm
Ramps- Ramp length divided by ramp height Wheels and axles- radius of wheel divided by radius of axle Pulleys- 2 times the number of moveable pulleys
Reflection
During this project there were many bumps in the road. It was sometimes difficult to hear others because of the hammering, sawing, and drilling. It was also sometimes hard to work with people I didn't know. But when it came to hard work and working as a team, we deserve an A+. Even though we truly had a simple machine, It was very tough to build, but most of us I guess had a natural talent! My favorite part of this was definitely the building process because it was something new for me and was just really fun, but my least favorite part was probably learning about simple machines and mechanical advantage. The reason for that is because I got it the first time but not everybody did so we had to keep going over it. I am really proud of our ramp because it turned out very sturdy and was very well built. If I could improve on one thing, I would definitely stress out less. I knew we were going to do great but sometimes you need something to remind yourself that, because in the end it turned out just as I thought it would.