An interesting approach to science projects where students are challenged to create complex machines that do very simple jobs, e.g., opening a door. Offers four ideas for projects.

Students take a simple task and make it much more complicated using a cardboard box. Each group must use a minimum of six simple machines utilizing at least four types of simple machines. The goal is to keep the initial impulse moving...

Students will have completed a unit of forces and motion prior to the current unit of study on simple machines (lever, inclined plane, screw, wedge, pulley, wheel and axle). Students will review the functions and examples of simple...

Build a virtual Rube Goldberg machine, and try to create a successful path for the ball. Requires Adobe Flash.

Explore motion, force and energy by building a complicated contraption to pour milk into a glass.

Sometimes these are changes that happen routinely in the natural world, and sometimes these are "makeovers" where human creations transform energy into a specific form that serves a specific need. Either way, we call these changes energy...