The smaller, lighter spheres are not heavy enough to tilt the lever, so they roll to the right. The spheres are poured into a funnel, and land on a lever when they fall out the bottom. This machine uses a lever to separate larger, heavier spheres from smaller, lighter spheres. Another example of a gravity-powered marble machine.
When a lighter marble strikes the ramp the ramp will not rotate and the marble will fall into a cup on the other end.įigure 2. When a heavy marble strikes the ramp it will rotate on the hinge and deposit the marble into a cup on one end. On either side of the hinged ramp there is a plastic cup. Scaffolding made from popsicle sticks holds a piece of paper that will funnel materials onto a hinged ramp. Continue on to the Materials section to gather the items you will need for this project.Ī marble sorting machine uses gravity to separate marbles of different weights. In order to enter your design in the 2016 Fluor Engineering Challenge, you must pick from a limited list of materials to build your machine, follow a set of rules (outlined in the Procedure), and calculate a score for your machine. They are not necessarily the "best" methods, and you might come up with your own design that is more creative or works better. Keep in mind that the machines in Figures 1 and 2 are just two examples of how you could approach the task. You will start out with a cup containing a mix of two different size spheres, pour them into the machine, and the machine should sort them into two separate cups. In this project, your goal is to build a gravity-powered marble sorting machine that can sort large and small plastic spheres (representing rocks and gems, respectively), like the ones shown in Figures 1 and 2. Many times, these mechanical sorters are powered by motors, but simple systems are powered only by gravity. Some systems use bursts of compressed air to blow away lighter materials, while materials with a higher density remain in place. Particles with a smaller diameter fall down through the screens, while larger particles stay on top. Others use mechanical methods like screening, where particles fall through screens with different-sized holes. Some sorting systems use complex electrical sensors, for example, to measure whether a metal is magnetic or how reflective it is, in order to sort them. Modern industrial mines use a variety of automated processes to separate valuable gems and minerals from dirt and other rocks.
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Early miners would use a manual process, called panning to separate gold nuggets from dirt and sand in a pan. What if you worked at a bank and had to sort thousands of coins, or at a food processing factory dealing with thousands of pounds of flour? Then it would certainly help to have a machine do the work.
Regardless of what exactly they sort, they all have something in common: they automate a task that would be very difficult, or even impossible, for humans to do! It is not such a big deal to sort a few dollars' worth of change or to use a hand sifter for a cup of flour.
Sorting machines come in all shapes and sizes, ranging from tiny toy coin sorters to huge industrial sifting machines used in food processing or mining. Note: This project can also be done for your local science fair, in addition to, or instead of, the Fluor Challenge. Try this project to build your own marble machine and submit your score to see how you rank against other competitors in theĢ016 Fluor Engineering Challenge and possibly win a cash prize for your school or afterschool organization! That might seem like a strange task, but have you ever used a coin sorter to separate pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters? How about using a sifter in the kitchen to separate fine grains of flour or sugar from bigger lumps? Machines that can automatically sort objects or particles of different sizes are used in many applications for example, in the mining industry to separate valuable gems and minerals from rocks and dirt. Put your engineering skills to the test to see if you can build a machine-powered by nothing but gravity-that will automatically sort out two different sizes of plastic spheres. Create Assignment Create Announcement Abstract
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