AboutRalph Salier-Hellendag Expertise Science Fair Judge for many years and experience with robotics, biology, chemistry, industrial processes, metalurgy and metal forming.
Experience Science Fair Judge for many years and have helped several students get to state level competition. Most recently 2 of my students received state level awards and one went on to the nationals in Washington DC.
Education/Credentials BA Archaeology - Anthropology
MA Business Anthropology
Question My son needs to create an invention that includes a Simple Machine - i.e. lever,wheel and axle, pulley, inclined plane, screw or a wedge.
Answer Hi Carla,
A simple invention/machine. Does your son have match box cars and perhaps a match box car track? How about blocks and or tinker toys? If so, then you have all of the elements you need to make just the kind of thing your son needs to create.
Using the tinker toys build a frame work from which the match box car track can be set up at an angle. The track should slope down ward and then slightly up at the bottom so that when the car goes down the track it "flies" into the air. Build a block tower so that when the car hits the blocks it knocks down the tower which then falls onto a block resting on a triangle block (like a teter = totter). This causes the teter totter to flip the other way and this releases a string which is tied to a block at the top of the tinker toy structure which acts as a pully and drops the block into a cup. The block could also be an ice cube and the device a machine to deliver an ice cube to a cup of water.
I hope that you can follow my description. It is a bit like a Rube Goldberg contraption.
