momentmag.com: A little red toy car hits a domino, causing a clickety-clack cascade that eventually tugs a string, which releases a ball that rolls down a chute and hits another ball, which rolls across the floor and into a box… Even if you’ve never heard the term “Rube Goldberg machine,” you’ve probably seen lots of them throughout your life without knowing what they’re called. Think of the classic mid-century board game Mousetrap, the Acme Corporation contraptions that Wile E. Coyote built to try to catch the Road Runner, or the epic paint-splattering video the rock band OK Go made to promote its single “This Too Shall Pass.” Odes to Rube Goldberg machines are everywhere.
8 comments:
Oh, to be the first comment on the dreaded Rube Goldberg machine. All the other freshman DPs are probably still recovering from our own presentation. It’s kind of funny to think of Rube Goldberg’s famous machines as a prank gone wrong. Goldberg would be rolling in his grave if he knew how complicated these machines have gotten, and how unironically celebrated they are. However, it is pretty satisfying to see one run correctly from start to finish. I think my class’s opinion definitely matches Goldberg’s original satirical spirit – if it takes 24 official tries, an all nighter, a lost weekend, and too many hours, tears, and materials to count, it is probably easier to just get up and push the button yourself. I will continue to enjoy the “This Too Shall Pass” video and the digital Zoom Goldberg machine from Mythic Quest, but I will be forever scarred by the experience of trying to build my own.
I never like Rube Goldburg machines but after sinking over 50 hours in 3 days, all my sanity and blood, sweat and tears into creating one I can officially say I detest Rube machines. It feels like a trivial prank to have something that is so time and resource intensive to do something as simple as pressing a button as well as a borderline impossible task to build. The most unreliable part of a Rube machine is luck. Even if every part works consistently 95% of the time with all of the parts compiled there is still a statistical likelihood the machine will fail a significant portion of the time. These dreaded machines are also utterly pointless and boring, taking forever to do trivial tasks and often using the same mechanisms over and over again as you can only truly use gravitational energy and only want to be able to use pulleys and balls to make the machine run. Overall I believe that when Goelburg died his invention should have died with him.
Theo
This article is extremely thorough and talks about so many aspects of Rube Goldberg machines, the process of creating one, what inspired them, and more. I had no idea there was so much information about Goldberg's experiences and what inspired him. After just creating a Goldberg machine, I have such a different perspective on it. There are so many things that I wish I would have known before creating this machine that I'm sure some of these articles would have helped with. One example that the article references was one that I had completely forgotten about. in Home Alone, I never realized that Kevin McCallister was truly creating one of the most spectacular Rube Goldberg machines. I should have rewatched one of the movies before doing the class project for inspiration. this article talks a lot about examples of Rube Goldberg machines, and makes me wonder what I should have done to prepare a little bit better for our project
If anyone knows anything about building a Rube Goldberg machine, it's me. And if anyone knows anything about rage against a Rube Goldberg machine, it’s absolutely me (and every other CMU dp). However, when we did rube, I never took the time to look into the history of the absurd machines. I never knew that Goldberg was a Jewish comedian and artist. It also surprised me that ˝oldberg never created actual machines, only drawings of them. And they were not meant to be taken seriously, they were meant to poke fun at over-dependence on technology. Nowadays, they have completely changed in meaning, and people who build the machines are trying to boast how ridiculously advanced they can get. It’s nice to know that in our machine, we used techniques that have been used since the dawn of Rube Goldberg machines, like dominoes falling, toy cars, and balls rolling down chutes.
Personally, I don’t understand why rube goldberg machine still exists and the use of it in modern world. Of course you can justify it by saying educational purposes and that it could benefit an individual in learning about the technical side in how a machine works. However, with the modern world technology, I’m truly expecting that in the future, I don’t even need to type out my ideas and a machine can just automatically read my mind and type it out for me. In this case, the purpose of building a rube goldberg machine does not exist and that by the technology getting improved, the machine does not represent the modern technology and how it works. Surely, I understand that in the past, these machines definitely represent many crucial and impactful ways in how motion has been sent from one to another, but now, with the modern technology, I hope there could be a better way to learn the same thing.
Ah the Rube Goldberg machine. My least favorite convoluted method to solve something that would be invariably easier and faster to just get up and do. Saying that, I think the illustrations of the machines are very cool, and while I’m not the biggest fan of the fact that these machines intended to be very fun and impossible on paper are now basically only examined in real life, I do see the intricacy and importance of these illustrations. I know I have a very specific, skewed view towards these machines due to recent events but even Rube Goldberg himself didn’t like the physical versions that much! The positives towards these machines are a couple - they’re an interesting engineering puzzle, and I get the argument that the article makes that these machines are a small piece of what makes us human in the age of AI and rapid technological advancements. That being said, I will not be on a quest to make another Rube Goldberg machine anytime soon (read: never).
Ruby Rube I think you should Rube yourself
A short excerpt by me
Ruby Rube, oh how you stress us out. How do you think that us twenty two can tolerate your pain? Twenty three if you count our moral support. It truly felt like we were little lab rats in social experiment. Crick crack, lets see who breaks. I personally now think that rube goldberg machines are tainted. A sham, a waste of space, a beacon of ineptitude. Cheers my dears, for the opportunity to or rather the opportunity to NEVER make a rube goldberg machine again. Life's too short to waste on such a boring thing like a pretentious machine
On a more serious note. Rube Goldberg machines don’t have much logical function other than providing a good engineering thinking activity. They tend to be much less efficient than actually doing a task yourself. A spectacle for spectacle’s sake. A waste of space.
Oh, the wonderful Rube Goldberg Machine that dared to wreak havoc on 33. I find that the rube project as a whole was a really interesting way to teach exactly what a critical path is; a defined set of actions that are required to be able to successfully complete a full process (whether that be a project, a show, etc.) I think the most interesting part of this article in particular is that, just like a majority of our class, Rube was not exactly keen on the machines even existing in the first place, and kind of saw them to be ridiculous machines with no specific reason for existence. However, I actually had a lot of fun with the project, and really enjoyed getting to draft and troubleshoot my pieces, and enjoyed a majority of the project up until when we had to actually sit and wait for other groups to figure their own projects out, and tensions began to rise. Overall, I found the project to be a lot of fun, and very fulfilling by the end, when it finally worked fully through.
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