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Purdue Students Win Rube Goldberg Contest

Posted by kdawson on from the lucrative-offers-from-mickey-dee dept.

Dekortage writes "How long does it take to make a burger? Students from Purdue University's Society of Professional Engineers won the 2008 Rube Goldberg contest with a device that requires 156 steps to assemble a burger. According to the team captain, 'We put 4,000 to 5,000 man-hours into this machine since September, and all the hard work has been well worth it.' That's a long time to wait for dinner." Here's a video of the winning entry in operation.

11 of 105 comments (clear)

  1. Rube Goldberg by MyNymWasTaken · · Score: 3, Informative

    That's Goldberg.

    http://www.rubegoldberg.com/

  2. Wrong Video? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    I read burger, but I see orange juice...

    1. Re:Wrong Video? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Here's a link with a story that depicts the machine, although we don't get to watch it all the way through:
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Q4fTPwXy4U

  3. Where's the Beef? by Jason+Earl · · Score: 3, Informative

    I watched the full video, and I didn't see any hamburgers get made. Did I miss something?

    1. Re:Where's the Beef? by micksam7 · · Score: 3, Informative

      The video is of last year's machine, which made orange juice.

  4. Orange juice burger?? by Feanturi · · Score: 3, Informative

    The winning entry according to the article was the burger maker. But the video linked in the summary is a machine making orange juice.

    1. Re:Orange juice burger?? by tist · · Score: 5, Informative

      This video shows orange juice in the making.
      The video to the burger maker is here: http://news.uns.purdue.edu/UNS/rube/rube.index.html

      Enjoy

    2. Re:Orange juice burger?? by Sneeka2 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Thanks, but unfortunately the same incompetent cameramen as in posts video. Could they possibly show any less of what's going on, next to pointing the camera straight at the ceiling?

      --
      Bitten Apples are still better than dirty Windows...
  5. Re:nice by lilomar · · Score: 3, Informative

    You don't know what a Rube Goldberg Machine is, do you?

    --
    The creator of this post (Jacob Smith) hereby releases it, and all of his other posts, into the public domain.
  6. Re:Geez by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Coral Cache can help.

  7. Where is MicroSoft's entry? by dr_db · · Score: 2, Informative

    I am sure that all admins can attest to the fact that MS products require a ridiculous number of extra steps to perform simple tasks.