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

Movie on front page of slashdot!

[random_culchie]

Heres a link just in case. Mirror

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.