rube goldberg

Amazing Alex (99 cents) for iPhone or Android is a physics game where you're challenged to create chain reactions with objects to complete objectives. Our hero, Amazing Alex, is a kid who's stuck cleaning his room and tries to get creative with organizing his belongings by building Rube Goldburg-like devices.… Read more

Blowing up a balloon yourself is boring. It's always better to spend more than 5,000 hours building a machine that can do it for you in an extremely absurd fashion.

The Purdue Society of Professional Engineers recently broke its own record for creating the most complex Rube Goldberg machine with a 300-step dazzler that goes through many, many motions just to blow up a balloon. And then pop it.

The entry failed to win the latest Rube Goldberg Machine Contest, which honors the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist with a gizmo that accomplishes a simple task in a convoluted way. It did, however, break the Purdue Society of Professional Engineers' own Guinness record, according to Purdue University.

"We did some bold things with this machine that have never even been attempted that probably startled judges, competitors and spectators," a university release quoted team president Zach Umperovitch as saying. "But we were hungry, and we were going to go large or stay home." … Read more

For years, Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman were known for one thing: being the "MythBusters."

But now, the two have launched a new show, Discovery Channel's "Unchained Reaction," "a new six-part series that pits two teams of varying backgrounds against each other to build an elaborate chain-reaction contraption."

Think giant Rube Goldberg machines--balls falling and knocking things into other things. Seesaws going up and throwing things into the air, each step in the process impacting the next, with each team vying to build the most impressive contraption in five tension-packed days. The … Read more

For the second straight year, a team from the University of Wisconsin-Stout has won a national collegiate competition to build the Rube Goldberg device. "Best" should be put in quotes, of course, as the contraption in question--named after a legendary New Yorker artist famous for cartoon creations in which machines turned a simple procedure into inordinately complex routines--showed how to water a plant in 135 steps while recounting the story of a haunted Louisiana mansion.

As you can see in the video below, the winning entry--dubbed "The Westing Estate"--would have made the great Goldberg proud. And just to add a touch of authenticity, Goldberg's granddaughter was on hand for the competition, which took place at Purdue University in Indiana and attracted about 2,000 spectators.

In 2010, the University of Wisconsin-Stout similarly took home the top prize for its "Valley of the Kings" invention, which recounted a chronology of events following the death of King Tut.

This story originally appeared on CBSNews.com. … Read more

I am not sure I would ever want a cell phone with a wooden case.

But if anything could ever persuade me to consider it, it has to be this wildly inventive (and therefore Japanese) ad for the Touchwood SH-08C by NTT Docomo.

In order to show the sheer magic of wood, the ad's creators, a company called Drill Inc., decided to go to a wood. This is what we in advertising call "lateral thinking."

However, in between the trees they then built the largest, Rube Goldberg-est wooden xylophone ever.

Then they rolled a little wooden ball … Read more

QUEENS, N.Y.--They did it, mostly: The artists and engineers who dreamed up, built, and now operate a large-scale version of the classic board game Mousetrap took center stage at this weekend's World Maker Faire at the New York Hall of Science, with the aim of flattening a New York taxi with a two-ton safe through a series of deployments of their massive Rube Goldberg machine. Standing guard were the Lifesize Mousetrap operators--a half dozen clowns, a few women in tasteful burlesque costumes with mouse ears and tails, and a man in a gorilla suit.

If this all … Read more

In a piece headlined "Rube Goldberg meets Aquaman" a few weeks ago, we wrote of something called PowerSwim--a contraption developed by DARPA that would allow Navy SEALs and others to swim 150 percent faster and with less effort than they would with regular fins. In describing it, we had to rely on an illustration done by Popular Mechanics. Apparently PM never saw the thing either, because it looks nothing like that picture. Here, thanks to the understanding and generous folks at DARPA, is the real deal: The photo's a little muddy but, after all, it's under … Read more

So, here's this cool video on Revver.

I don't know how the creator made it.

I don't know what he was trying to do.

I don't know what equipment he used.

But one thing's for sure.

He's got way too much time on his hands.

(Video: Tim Fort/Revver)