Rube Goldberg

I feel a special affinity for Rube Goldberg. More and more, my projects around this house have begun to resemble his work. Need an arduously complex solution to a simple problem? I'm your man.

The boys' pre-school chore this morning was to sweep the deck and skim the pool. This 20-minute exercise dragged on for more than an hour. In the boys' defense, it was windy this morning. As time dragged on, the questions came quicker. "How can we finish this when the wind keeps blowing more leaves into the pool?" "Why do we need to skim when the pool has a filter?" "Why doesn't Jason (our robotic pool cleaner) do this job?" "How LONG is this going to take?"

Finally, I unlocked the chains and granted freedom. Freedom from the endless questions.

When we began school this morning, we went online and reviewed Rube Goldberg's work. We'd spent some time on his work last year. I was once again pleasantly surprised when they remembered who he was. So I gave them each a large tablet, a marker, and 15 minutes to come up with a Rube Goldberg solution to the leaf skimming problem. I gave them a choice of problem:

a) leaves falling into the pool
b) leaves in the pool

In other words, they could either come up with a solution that prevented leaves from getting into the pool, or a solution for getting the leaves out of the pool. Fifteen minutes later, they had... not much. I gave them some suggestions. It helped when I reminded them that the solutions should be overly complex to the task, and virtually impossible to implement. Like, maybe they would involve an elephant, or an alarm clock, or something of that nature.

I liked what they came up with.

Kyle

leaf(a) falls into pool(b), activates sensor(c) which trips alarm clock(d), waking rooster(e) which crows, tipping brick(f) off top of head. Brick falls on leaf, driving it onto spring(g) on bottom of pool. Spring sends leaf to pair of robotic hands(h) that crush it up and deposit it on top of wind-up car(i). Car drives leaf to drain(j), where it tips over from the suction and the leaf is pulled in.

Josh

leaf(a) falls into pool(b), activates sensor(c) which triggers scissors(d), cutting rope(e) which causes fork(f) to drop, "porking" (Josh's word) elephant(g) on the rear. Startled elephant leaps into pool. Resulting tidal wave(h) ejects leaf from pool.

So they drew these out, and pleased as I was with their "inventions", I knew right away that we had developed a severe deficiency of illustration skills. Well, not so much developed it - its always been there, and I've never done anything to help them overcome it.



I mean, that is one pissed-off looking rooster. I suppose Kyle was studying my face as he drew it. Anyway, we'll have to work on that. The drawing that is. Not my face.

Next, I had them label all the key elements of their inventions: a,b,c,d, etc. Then I asked them to write out how their machine worked, just as I did above. Half an hour later, we had some horribly messy scribbles on two writing tablets. It looked more like the territorial scratchings of some kind of rabid animal. Hm. K. Got some work to do there. I can see where we'll be concentrating our efforts in the next few weeks.

At this point, the "fun" part of our day was over. Sigh.

So, we did some math review - long addition and subtraction. That went pretty well, and they actually enjoyed it.

Finally, some geography.
We reviewed the concept of latitude and longitude. Its funny, I've always distinguished the two by the lyrics to the Jimmy Buffet song "Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes". The further south you move toward the equator, the more laid-back it is, presumably. I launched into an animated version of a Jimmy Buffet explanation, and when I'd finished, they sat there blinking back at me. You could hear crickets in the background.

Finally, with a little help, they looked up a couple of countries based on the coordinates I gave them, and that was the end of the school day. It was time for me to move on to my next Rube Goldberg project. Like... fixing the broken dryer.

Sounds like a job for Jason.