Slashdot Mirror
The Complicated Way to Turn on a Flashlight
jangobongo writes "A machine built by the Purdue Society of Professional Engineers employed an outer-space theme and used steps that incorporated a bouncing water balloon, a fireman action figure fleeing a fire and weights attached to a spinning bicycle wheel to win the 18th national Purdue Rube Goldberg Machine Contest. The winning machine told the story of rocket being launched. As the rocket traveled into space, a meteor hit Earth and started a fire. While the mock fire was put out, the rocket turned on the flashlight to shine back down on Earth. A short video clip can be seen here. The contest was filmed by the Game Show Network to be featured on the network's show, 'Games Across America,' at some future date."
1.2Mb .mov
:)
This ought to stress-test the machine.
Here, here, here and here
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
I guess CNN is now the place to go for breaking geek news.
Heres a link just in case. Mirror
you post a 1.2 meg video on the front of slashdot which activates 50,000 people with fast connections to right click and download, thus setting a server on fire...
but do I get filmed? nooo....
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
Anybody remember the Honda commercial like this?
A short video clip can be seen here.
Not anymore.
Didn't Sierra do this with The Incredible Machine?
So civilians figured out what the US Military does everyday.
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You haven't heard the one about how many Purdue Society of Professional Engineers does it take to turn on a flashlight? :P
Use Minidisc? Join the Minidisc.org forums.
is continued as their server burns to a crisp....
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
The webserver is hosted on the flashlight..
This will be great for me! Where can I order? I will never have to worry about people using my flashlight batteries up again, as long as I don't keep the operation manual nearby. This is similar to the solution I put in place with my laptop. Students used to come in and drain my laptop's battery when it ran Windows. Now my laptop runs Linux. When tehy try to use my laptop, they tell me my laptop crashed. I wonder if those who attempt to use this new light emitting will think it is broken or something...
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In any case I read the AP feed and it confused me.
What is the point of a machine contest, where the machines are needlessly large and complex. It really sounded like the ideal machine did one basic function and then 12-14 extraneous and overcomplex functions.
Was the contest specifically about how to make tasks more complex than necessary? Like an obuscated code contest for machines?
(usually the code seems a fair amount more useful/clever than this machine though...)
how many Rube Goldbergian machines we use without realizing how much so they are...yeah, that was english.
Take for instance my friend's cell phone, it rings; like, as in ringing. You know, the sound a bell makes.
Well, to me the funny thing is how much processing has to occur to create this ringing sound - all the decompression, digital to analog conversion - how some IC's are monitoring the juice from the battery - all to mimic a simple, age-old bell.
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Check out my Music Video!
From volume 2 of the Kama Sutra, I presume.
That's almost as bad as having a Vice President's oilcompany winning US oil contracts in Iraq... Oh wait!
Good job the short clip was in .mov format or it may have had some downloads.
The whole concept behind this originated from a Honda ad.
/. linked to a video in which a bunch of students had re-created the ad, albeit more amatuerishly.
Not so long ago
And now, adding to the wonderful physics of it all...we have flashlights.
The things that come out of really great minds that are really bored consistently baffle me. Cases in point: The USB fishtank, the belt-driven watch.
They could have just used this
Thank you for your feedback.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Might I add one of Rube Goldberg's first attempts?
Not Quite Rube Goldberg
Maybe the movie is transferred via morse code over the flashlight. Must take a while to turn the flashlight on and off.
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In case you haven't heard of him, he's the great grandson of dances with wolves.
There is also this great ad from Honda I think all but one little part is real.
There are, if you can believe it, real flashlights that are almost as complicated. This one has a thirteen page user's guide in addition to a quick start guide and a reference card.
(The LED Museum is a site that all nerds should bookmark. I believe it's been Slashdotted before.)
Tom had much more complicated techniques.
[NT]
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
It's not really a video of the machine in action, as one would expect. They could have cut down their traffic by 80% by simply mentioning that in the article blurb.
One of my kids' favorite games was "The Incredible Machine." The last version we had ran on Win 95 and I haven't seen it for a while.
There was a pretty good parts kit: cannons, cats, I can't remember all the stuff. The challenge was to put together some assemblage of stuff that would accomplish a goal. It was more fun than Meccano or Lego because the stuff worked. My daughter is studying to be an industrial designer and part of the credit may go to "The Incredible Machine".
All your joke are belong to us.
For great justice.
here is a torrent dude: xbmodder.us/rub.torrent
... the Mars Rover had a night light.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
You've obviously never actually set a schoolgirl on fire..
(I don't reccomend the experience without earplugs)
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
You've obviously never actually set a schoolgirl on fire..
(I don't reccomend the experience without earplugs)
Actually, it varies by school and girl.
Shouldn't this whole article be modded -100000 redundant?
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
No description of a good Rube Goldberg device is complete without the phrase "...which scares the chicken, who lays an egg, which rolls down a tube..."
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...licensed, or what? Can't we see it now?
How dare those engineers tantalize us with the story and the photos and the frustratingly short clip!
I would love to see a video of the contraption operating from start to end, as I'm sure many other people would.
Commonwealth readers may be more familiar with Heath Robinson (1872-1944) than Rube Goldberg (1883-1970).
My rube goldberg machine involves the evolution of Gerbles until the point that they are capable of building thier own flashlights and turning them on. I hope there isn't a time limit.
I've been teaching science for 25 years - the complicated way to turn on a flashlight is apparently to hand someone a bulb, a battery, and a wire and ask them to make it work. It's amazing how many people (kids AND adults) can't do this or do it after many many wrong tries.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
It's really no surprise that Purdue has won three years in a row. They set very restrictive regulations and then ignore them in their own design. They include computer controlled mechanisms, air compressors and whatever else while telling others not to do exactly that. I suppose it's their contest, but what's the point then?
if I looking for rocket
him name is hopkin red rocket
\_______ |
|_______> -0-
/ |
I lost my rocket
555-3228
Love, Jerry
P.S. I'll find my rocket
Who took my rocket
Who found my rocket
Dave: What's it doing now?
Our ringleader: Messing up on national TV, Dave.
To all you folks joking about the purdue site being slashotted, no worries. purdue hosts several open source projects, and i think they might even be a gnu mirror. i'd imagine they have some heavy duty equipment.
Thank you for your feedback.
Microsoft website, is that you?
*gives funeral rites to now-burning networkmirror.com servers*
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
..and I'm proud to say that we keep things complicated around here! -jajawarrior
A very small section was fake. If you recall the prevous slashdot article, the pipe rolling was CG'ed, because their warehouse was too small to hold the entire contraption.
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Click here, you know you wanna!
i found this as i was poking at the site:n ner.mov
http://news.uns.purdue.edu/mov/2005/rube05localwi
it seems to be the long version of the machine. it's 1:01 in length and 3.3megs big. since it's not the opening post and probably wont be modded too high, i don't think there should be any bandwidth problems. but if there is, shoot me a email and i'll mirror it.
HD Trailers
If you like stuff like this check out the film "The Way Things Go" http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000 05UW7W/103-4179575-7539804?v=glance
Don't blame me, I voted for Cthulhu.