rube goldberg
”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 »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?
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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.
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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]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.
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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]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]
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]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]



















