Introducing our Amazing Energy Machine – a Rube Goldberg machine with a difference

I hope everyone has been enjoying Science Week so far. Here in Galway we have the wonderful Science and Technology Festival that runs for two full weeks with lots of activities around the city and county. I have been visiting lots of schools with a brand new workshop called, the Eccentric Energy Science Workshop and I have loved all the interaction with the children and staff.

I also got to bring this workshop to Dowra in County Cavan, last Friday, to share with more school children and I had a fantastic welcome there. Monaghan and Cavan County Councils have set up amazing activities all over the counties for science week.

As part of the workshop I really wanted to create a Rube Goldberg machine that was portable enough to bring to each venue, and so I enlisted the help of my long suffering husband and he spent most of the Halloween week (and a few days after) making Dr. How’s Science Wows very own Amazing Energy Machine. He did point blank refuse to incorporate some of my more wacky ideas (like the whoopie cushion I wanted included) but I think he did a fantastic job and teacher and students alike have all loved it as much as I do.

So here it is with some slow motion editing included so everyone can have a closer look and hopefully identify all the different types of energy involved.

So how many different types of energy did you identify? Let me know in the comments below and, as always, I love to receive your questions so do send on any that you might have!

A few extra links

Thanks to everyone who attended the Eccentric Energy Workshop at the Galway Science and Technology Festival at NUI, Galway. Here are a few of the links that I said I would share…

This is how you set up the lollipops in one of the experiments from the workshop…  https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=7&v=r7j7l39ZAsU

And here is a link to a related activity that children might also like… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQyGDKklVPU

Looking for more? Check out this episode of Is Eolaí Mé all about Energy!