Gizmodo: rube goldberg machines

10 Rube Goldberg Machines For Food Lovers

Sean Fallon — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 18:20:00 EDT

Do you love eating? Do you love amusingly complex machinery? If the answer is yes on both counts, get a load of Eat Me Daily's list of the top ten food-based Rube Goldberg Machines.

Warning: watching these videos may result in hunger and the song Powerhouse by Raymond Scott playing over and over in your head (especially the second part). [Eat Me Daily]

15 Rolling Ball Sculptures In Action

Sean Fallon — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 14:30:00 EST

As you know, the allure of Rube Goldberg-style contraptions is well documented. There is just something captivating about watching a ball make its way down a complicated track. If you agree, than you will certainly find something to enjoy in OObjects list of 15 rolling ball sculpture videos. It features everything from commercial kits to a 70 foot tall Energy Machine in the Hong Kong Science Museum. [OObject]

The Top 10 Rube Goldberg Machines Featured On Film

Mark Wilson — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 12:00:00 EDT

Who doesn't love the intricacy of Rube Goldberg machines? A celebration of the most mechanical, complex and absurd way of performing an everyday task, there's nothing quite like watching a cuckoo clock set off a bowling ball that rolls into a pie pan which lifts up some guy's pants before he gets arrested for exposure—again. And combined with the over-the-top designs of Hollywood movies, these gadgets of pure imagination find their most welcome (and plausible) home.

So in celebration, here are the top 10 Rube Goldberg machines in movies, listed in handy clips for your viewing pleasure. Warning: the best Rube Goldberg machines are not always found in the best movies.

10. Robots
Not bad, though CGI sort of equals cheating.
9. Edward Scissorhands
Tiny puppet robots FTW!
8. The Money Pit
A sort of revision on the Rube Golberg machine.
7. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
Chitty vs. Kit, which wins?
6. Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
This sequence was amazing, and done in claymation.
5. Goonies
I always identified with the fat kid.
4. Pee Wee's Big Adventure
Pee Wee had it great before that "incident."
3. Back to the Future
Great mechanical sequence, great film opening.
2. Ernest Goes to Jail
Never in my life did I think I'd post seriously about an Ernest movie.
1. The Way Thing Go
There's a reason this is the number one clip.

List compiled by Richard Blakeley & Nick McGlynn.

Purdue's 156-Step Burger Maker Wins Rube Goldberg Contest

Kit Eaton — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 10:45:26 EDT

We've brought you Rube Goldberg-style clocks and toys, but none of them are a match for the 156-step device that's just won the annual Rube Goldberg Machine Contest. This year's challenge was to assemble a burger with vegetables, condiments and two bun halves. The meat was pre-cooked... a sensible idea to avoid fires and explosions: you'll understand when you look at the great pics of the machines that MAKE took. Beneath the gallery you'll find a demo video of some of them in action. Sadly we don't have one of the complete 156-step run yet, so you'll just have to imagine its fantasticness.

The whole idea is to create a machine that combines creative thinking with complexity in design, and, most importantly, inefficiency— much in the vein of Goldberg's cartoons.

The winning team, the Purdue Society of Professional Engineers, have had plenty of practice at this— they've won two of the previous three contests. Their machine won them a regional prize earlier in the year, and for the Nationals they added another 55 steps. With somewhere around 5,000 man-hours of work in it, the victory seems well deserved, particularly when the rules stipulate that the task must be achieved in more than 20 steps.

Awesome, pointless, engineering fun. We love it. [MAKE and CNN]