Our juniors and seniors have been reading Andy Weir's The Martian and exploring the physics of different aspects described in the book.
In the novel, astronaut Mark Watney has been left alone on Mars and has to use the things he has on hand to do things that have never been done before, just to stay alive. Many tasks would be very easy on Earth, but in the novel he is stuck on Mars, so every task is more difficult!
What could be more appropriate than a Rube Goldberg Machine to help students understand this?
Working with a partner, students had two weeks to build a Rube Goldberg Machine to tip a sideways toy car onto its wheels. A very simple task. However, their machine had to have at least 12 different stages and use at least 4 different simple machines. And similar to the astronaut in the book, they were not allowed to purchase anything- they could only reuse, recycle, or borrow items.
Students got very creative! There was a lot of trial and error, but every group persevered and at the end of the two weeks everyone had a very complicated machine designed to do a simple task! (Reverence to Rube Goldberg!)