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."

Comments

mirrors, including .mov

[winkydink]

1.2Mb .mov

This ought to stress-test the machine. :)

Here, here, here and here

Re:mirrors, including .mov

[spoonsman]

Oops, forgot to make that a link.

http://xadar.noc.purdue.edu/traffic.php?local_grap h_id=480

Movie on front page of slashdot!

[random_culchie]

Heres a link just in case. Mirror

Re:Honda Commercial

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes

Re:first linked slashdotted already

[stratjakt]

That's exactly the point of the contest.

Rube Goldberg was a cartoonist from the turn of the century, famous for drawing really fancy complex ridiculous machines to do something simple.

When you see a cartoon where a bowling ball runs down a ramp, knocks a peg into a cup, which spins around a loop, and then pops a balloon, which makes a hamster run in a wheel, which in turn releases a latch which makes an anvil fall on Daffy Duck, that's a direct homage to Rube Goldberg.

Re:first linked slashdotted already

[kidgenius]

This is a Rube Goldberg machine. That is the point. To make something overly complex to do something simple. Here's some more info

Re:Concept

[curufinwe741]

You really have no idea what you're talking about. Rube Goldberg was the name a cartoonist who died in 1970. He was the one who began the trend of creating ridiculous and complex devices for accomplishing mundane tasks, such as a machine the size of a room built for the sole purpose of making a piece of toast.

Re:Honda Commercial

[hairykrishna]

It's a film by some swiss artists called "The way things go": http://www.frif.com/cat97/t-z/the_way_.html

Re:I see

[Anonymous Coward]

As a member of a team that lost to the one in question I can tell you it wasn't won because they are from Purdue and the contest was at Purdue, our machine got 2nd with one bad run and 60 steps, theirs looked better, worked perfectly twice (which is very very hard to do), had 125 steps (twice ours), we agree to defeat from the better team, but promise to be back next year to chew some boilermakers up.

Re:first linked slashdotted already

[Anonymous Coward]

ah yes like MS office

Re:Honda Ad

[DrKyle]

The whole ad was real, nothing was faked. People usually have a problem with the wheels rolling uphill, but they are real wheels just with top weights in them so lowering the center of gravity makes the wheels go uphill slightly.

Heath Robinson

[meowsqueak]

Commonwealth readers may be more familiar with Heath Robinson (1872-1944) than Rube Goldberg (1883-1970).

the complicated way is simpler...

[jpellino]

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.

the ENTIRE video clip

[krunk4ever]

i found this as i was poking at the site:
http://news.uns.purdue.edu/mov/2005/rube05localwin ner.mov

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.