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rube goldberg

Toothpick Art

Rube Goldberg Machine Is Made of 100,000 Toothpicks, Shaped Like San Francisco

Artist Scott Weaver spent 35 years working on this toothpick structure of San Francisco, which required 100,000 toothpicks and has a ball that rolls through the entire thing in Rube Goldberg fashion. But perhaps the best part of this is Weaver's sentiment towards the project, when he mentions that he loves to "know that I'm building something that people will see later on that took a long time to build for no reason." The nine-foot-tall creation is called "Rolling Through the Bay" and is currently on display at the Sonoma County Fair in Northern California. [Press Democrat via Laughing Squid]

rube goldberg machines

The Top 10 Rube Goldberg Machines Featured On Film

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. More »

essay

The Greatest Hangover Machine Never Built

Oof, my head. The trouble with being a weekend warrior is the day after. This morning I have a troupe of miniature MC Hammers inside my head, stomping in perfect time to the pile-driver thump, and chanting: "STOP! Hangover time!" Kingsley Amis best put the feeling into words in his novel Lucky Jim. "His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum." Oral hygiene aside, my brain has shrunk to the size of a frozen pea, and I can feel it rattling around inside my head like *ponders myopically* God, I don't know what. I'm HUNGOVER for God's sake. Is there a gadget that can help me? Or am I going to have to build one myself? More »

rube goldberg

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

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. More »

gadgets

Q-BA-Maze Marble Toy Teaches Kids About Construction, Balls

Combining the concepts of LEGO with the concepts of Rube Goldberg, the Q-BA-MAZE gives you a set of 20 to 50 pieces that you put together to make a descending maze for marbles. It sounds boring from our description, so if you watch the video you'll notice that it's...only slightly less boring. This may be cool to use to teach your kids about gravity, mazes and the fact that you shouldn't put marbles up your nose, but we'd be much more impressed if there were more pieces that did different things. [Q-BA-MAZE]

marble madness

Make Rube Goldberg-Style Marble Madness Mechanisms

If you are a fan of Rube Goldberg-style contraptions, you will love Think Geek's Cological Marble Run Construction Set. It contains everything you need to create your own marble mayhem—including 23 different types of marble-moving mechanisms like rolling cars and whacking mallets. More info and a video after the jump. More »

ads done right

New Guinness Rube Goldberg Ad Directed by Bravia 'Bouncing Balls' Creator

This new Guinness ad, airing for the first time tonight in the UK and shot over the course of a week in a village in Argentina, features a sweet Rube Goldberg contraption made out of everything from dominoes to old cars to flaming bales of hay. Apparently sequences of it were shot upwards of 15 times, so it probably wasn't a true Rube Goldberg contraption from start to finish, but that doesn't make it any less cool. It was directed by Nicolai Fuglsig, the brains behind Sony's iconic "bouncing balls" Bravia ad. Dude sure knows how to make a commercial, no? [Telegraph via Boing Boing]

flash wizardry

Outrageous Rube Goldberg-Style Animation Brings Online Catalog to Life


Is this a shopping site or a Rube Goldberg machine? It's both. Ride along with the rambunctious kitchen items in this brilliant example of Flash programming on a promo site from Dutch retailer Hema. The site loads slowly because there are probably thousands of readers just like you trying to view its hilarious animation, but we've saved you the trouble by recording its crazy sequence for you here. We'd like to see Amazon try something like this. [Hema, via boing boing]

robo ramen

Japanese Rube Goldberg Machine Makes Ramen in Six Long Minutes

While this bowl of Ramen may not be instant &mdash just the way Adam Frucci likes 'em &mdash its creation is utterly, butterly wonderful, if a tad long-winded. Six minutes in the making, this Japanese Rube Goldberg-esque machine uses skittles, model cars and what looks like miniature junk sails to make a bowl of steaming noodles with an egg on top. The commentator should have got a medal for keeping up the excitement levels. [Spluch]

gadgets

Rube Goldberg Machine, Opus 2: Goldbergian Concerto Kicks Major Ass


After seeing that Rube Goldberg masterpiece we showed you yesterday, we didn't think it could possibly be topped, but wait a doggone second. Here's another elaborate machine, and this one actually has a dubious purpose: to unroll toilet paper. While this presentation is not a one-shot proof that this outdoor machine can make it through its full sequence without stopping, we still like the artful background music and brilliant editing of this video clip, as well as the whimsical custom-made parts of this ingenious contraption. [Razrotem on YouTube]