Rube Goldberg Machine Winners

A Rube Goldberg machine is a machine that accomplishes a simple task in as complicated a way as possible. Every year Purdue University holds a Rube Goldberg Machine Contest. Teams of college students from all over the country design and build these machines and enter them in the competition. We invited this year's winners from Purdue University to show off their creation on the show.

 

Rube Golderg Contest 2012

On February 17, 2012, Argonne National Laboratory held its annual Rube Goldberg Contest at the Chicago Children's Museum at Navy Pier. The Rube Goldberg Machine Contest is named after cartoonist Reuben Lucius Goldberg, the spirit of whose work inspires the contest's weird machines and crazy mechanisms. This year's objective: Inflate and then pop a balloon.

Honda - The Cog (Rube Goldberg machine)

Several classical mechanics topics are covered in this Honda commercial.

Other Rube Goldberg machines

TED Talks: Adam Sadowsky and his Rube Goldberg machine

The band "OK Go" dreamed up the idea of a massive Rube Goldberg machine for their next music video -- and Adam Sadowsky was charged with building it. He tells the story of the effort and engineering behind the labyrinthine creation that quickly became a YouTube sensation.

Other TED Talks