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Purdue Claims World Record Goldberg Machine
With 244 steps The Time Machine, built by by members of the Purdue Society of Professional Engineers and Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, took first place and broke a world record at the 24th Annual National Rube Goldberg Machine Contest. From the article: "It starts with the Big Bang, re-creates the extinction of the dinosaurs, holds a jousting competition, flips over an album, and simulates World War II, a shuttle launch, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and even the alleged apocalypse in 2012. In its precisely executed review of history, 'The Time Machine,' a Rube Goldberg contraption built by members of the Purdue Society of Professional Engineers and Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, incorporates a record-breaking 244 steps—all to water a single flower."
With efficiencies like that, they have a bright future in government.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
On Makezine yesterday:
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/04/elaborate-and-mesmerizing-lego-great-ball-contraption.html
This is eight minutes of pure awesome.
Godaddy is a scam and a ripoff.
Because that would be racist. Just like a "Society of Female Professional Engineers" would be ok but a "Society of Male Professional Engineers" would be sexist and discriminatory.
The video lost all perspective of what a Rube Goldberg machine is about. The edits, cuts, overly zoomed and segmented action completely invalidates the purpose of the exercise. Was it a seamless execution of 244 sequential steps...or was it 244 individual actions filmed and edited together...can't tell from the video can ya. There's at least one segment that had a clear failure (the ice age downhill slalom jammed).
All in all, it was (probably) a great engineering effort that was ruined by someone trying to exercise clever video skills.
The amount of electrical devices (drills, actuators, etc) that are merely switched on and the seeming lack of creativity with the items in the machine makes it ugly, imo. That and the large amounts of spray-paint.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
It was. I watched this one live at the regional competition. Each step was started with a electromechanical actuator and each one ended on a switch. Each of the stages had microswitches when it was 'reset' and the back panel had lights that lit up when the stage was reset. It allowed it to be debugged easily and if a stage got stuck they could skip it with the switches.