This is a great reinvention of the classic Rube Goldberg machine, which uses radio frequency identification (RFID) to progress the chain reaction.

From Vimeo:

Jack Schulze and Timo Arnall made this video of an RFID-based, touch-free Rube Goldberg machine. While I don’t think it would win a middle school Rube Goldberg competition (something about not using enough different kinds of energy transfer), it’s a neat idea, and an excellent use for RFID tags. And they slipped an Arduino in at the end.

More here
nearfield.org/2009/09/nearness
and here
berglondon.com/blog/2009/09/15/nearness/

The Rube Goldberg site is full of awesomeness just like this…I do enjoy these

enough time wasted working for the Boss, now it’s my weekend. I’ve been working on some tweaks for a few of my designs and can’t wait to get into the shed and bang some nails into something!!

when I say “my designs” it’s fair to say that they are things (concepts) I’ve seen and thought ‘I can make one of those’ and so I have made my interpretation of it.

I need to post off some items (thankyou for your purchases!) then it’s on with the mad scientist dust coat and out with the holesaw kit and some neat timber wheels for secret item number 1.

Right after completing their Masters degrees in Manufacturing Engineering at Cambridge University, Tom Baynham and Ben Tyers proceeded in building one of the most amazing Rube Goldberg Machine i’ve ever seen. Check it out.

via Amazing Rube Goldberg Machine.

“Rube Goldberg (eigentlich Reuben Lucius Goldberg; * 4. Juli 1883 in San Francisco; † 7. Dezember 1970 in New York) war ein US-amerikanischer Cartoonist sowie Mitbegründer und erster Präsident der National Cartoonists Society, der US-amerikanischen Vereinigung professioneller Cartoonisten.”

Wikipedia.org

Was ist eine Rube-Goldberg-Maschine?

Eine sehr aufwendig gebaute Maschine die eine simple Aufgabe löst, z.B.: Teilen einer Orange, Drücken eines Knopfs,… .

Wie funktioniert eine Rube-Goldberg-Maschine?

Zunächst Einmal sollte beachtet werden, dass alle Bestandteile sich in einer stabilen oder labilen Lage befinden, sprich sie sollten nicht von alleine selbstständig  werden oder  in eine instabile Lage fallen. Nun kann man den ersten Bestandteil in eine instabile Lage versetzen und somit eine Kettenreaktion auslösen.

- Lyanc -

HEMA, the Dutch department store, has a new ad up on its website which turns the entire web store into one giant Rube Goldberg machine.

A Rube Goldberg machine created with… a Physics simulator… awesome!

Located on the Gulf Coast of Florida, Weeki Wachee Springs is the only city of live mermaids; Weeki Wachee was founded in 1947 by former Navy frogman, Newt Perry; the original mermaids were called “Aquabelles”; Weeki Wachee is one of the finest tourist attractions in the United States, and the entire operation—an underwater mermaid aquarium and a water park called Buccaneer Bay—is built on a natural spring; the spring is deep; if you go to Weeki Wachee—and you should go to Weeki Wachee—you will see mermaids, and you will gape like a prepubescent child; Weeki Wachee is a necessary destination in what Greil Marcus called “the old, weird America”; early last year, I met a girl—a young woman; I saw the girl perform in a Donna Reed dress, and she made me smile; let me clarify: I was on a semi-date, but when this girl walked on stage, everybody else in the room ceased to exist (including the semi-date, whose name I can not recall); soon after, this girl and I met for lunch in a park; I arrived before her, and as I waited, I wondered how I would appear to a beautiful girl in a car as she drove up; she arrived, then immediately went to the public restroom; I wondered if she was nervous too; probably not, I concluded; we sat down on a bench and talked for hours; I could have listened to her for days; when she spoke, I noticed a gentle lilt that reminded me perhaps of southern gentility—or Julie Andrews; I inquired about her accent, and she confessed that she stuttered as a child; years of practicing proper speech had created a curious enunciation of words; the resulting effect is that she seems like a kindergarten teacher, and you are her student; it is comforting; this girl’s stories meandered and circled and gave birth to other stories, like the tributary system of the Amazon River; I thought to myself: “What a lovely, odd girl”; at one moment in our conversation, her gaze drifted past me; she then said, “That squirrel looks like he’s reading a newspaper”; I turned to see a squirrel standing on hind legs, holding a scrap of paper in his front paws; the squirrel did look like he was reading a newspaper; the girl said that when she sees something so unbearably cute, it makes her want to grind her teeth; I understood what she meant (later, the same teeth-grinding issue arose with hummingbirds, except when they flew close she had a strange desire to pluck them from mid-air, like flying fruit); stop it! too cute!; our conversation in the park then drifted to Weeki Wachee, which was near her childhood home; I had heard that Weeki Wachee was celebrating its 60th anniversary, and the original mermaids would be performing a reunion show; we both talked about how fun it would be to go to the show; when we left the park, I wondered when I would see this girl again; soon, I hoped; I left for North Carolina the next day to visit friends in the military who were preparing to deploy for the Middle East; a week later, while in Wilmington, I received a phone call from the girl; she said that she was serious about going to Weeki Wachee, and wanted to know if I was just as serious; I was; I spent the summer getting to know this girl; we became friends; she liked to garden, and I once took a photo of her standing proudly with a handful of weeds, the sun setting behind her; she has the unique capacity to discover—in manual labor—the opportunity for magic; it is infectious; if this girl told you that hidden in the dirt and weeds was a wooden box full of gold, you would immediately grab a shovel and dig; I imagine her gorgeous mind as a Rube Goldberg machine, as Pee-Wee’s bedroom—an elaborate workshop of springs and sprockets and wee beasties tugging on levers, revealing rainbows and ghosts; late that summer, we flew to Florida and visited Weeki Wachee; we befriended some of the mermaids, and were even able to swim in the springs; she mastered using the oxygen tubes used by the mermaids and swam to the bottom (she was a natural, an Esther Williams—and the mermaids tried to recruit her to join their ranks); she outclassed me in the water; I watched from the surface as she fed bananas to floating turtles thirty feet below; I could not figure out how to breathe from those tubes—except in short spurts—but I loved being in the water, and while the girl swam below, her oxygen bubbles bursting around me, I thought: “I could not possibly feel more alive”; it was a couple months before the girl and I kissed; a year has passed, and I have since traveled to other cities to be with the girl, but still, when I am with her I feel so alive—and like I am floating; during “The Little Mermaid” show, the mermaids of Weeki Wachee sing: “We’re not like other women/We don’t have to clean an oven/And we never will grow old/We’ve got the world by the tail!”; when you go to Weeki Wachee—and you will go to Weeki Wachee—be sure to have your photo taken with a mermaid; mermaids are camera-friendly; you will never see a mermaid without her tail, and it is a given that she will be smiling; you will want photographic evidence of your visit; people will not believe that you met such a woman; you will need proof; have you ever been to a place so otherworldly you are sure you are dreaming?; I have.

If you know where to look then you might have come across show already. It’s called Pythagora Switch and it’s a children’s educational show from Japan that is a blast to watch.

Pythagora Switch, as opposed to most insipid American children’s progamming, is designed to get kids to think about the world in new ways. The 15 minute show is split into different segments and several of these are interesting to anyone.

One segment is known as the Algorithm March and it’s quite ingenious. Several different versions exist from the show including being at the airport, ninjas, robots, and Tokyo bus guides to name just a few.

Between longer segments they use short clips of Rube Goldberg Machines as a way to go from clip to clip. These are incredibly interesting to watch and the next youtube video collects a bunch of them.

There are a bunch of different segments; the pic above is from one where different principles are explained to the 2 bird children – these principles might be how things are made, something from science or engineering. Other segments include 10 Stick Anime and Framy, the next 2 videos are of 10 Stick Anime and the last is from Framy (couldn’t find a translated version of Framy though).

For right now Dattebayo is fansubbing it in their spare time so that means only about 8 shows have been done over the last couple of years. I’d like to see more so this post hasn’t been totally altruistic since I’d like more people to watch and hopefully get Dattebayo to do more.

For those of you who liked Rube Goldberg here’s another one. It is also awesome, and set in an office.

Isn’t it awesome!!! Please comment and stay tuned for more…

For anyone that loves rube goldbergs; watch this. It’s awesome:

For those of you who have no idea what a rube goldberg is, visit rube goldbergs on wikipedia.

One of my very first blog posts was about a Chain Reaction project which I carry out with Transition Year students.

The technical term for these things is actually Rube Goldberg machines.
From Wikipedia:

A Rube Goldberg machine is an incredibly overengineered apparatus that performs a very simple task in very indirect and convoluted fashion (thus absurdly violating the principle of parsimony).

I like this too (also from wikipedia)

It has been argued that fissioning uranium to boil water under tremendous temperature and pressure renders nuclear power a Rube Goldberg machine.

One of these was featured recently on youtube:

I continue to believe that it’s a wonderful way for students to carry out project work, and I would certainly have no problem employing this guy as an engineer ahead of someone with similar qualilfications but higher grades.

There is even a Japanese Championship involving these contraptions.

Apparently learning can be fun after all . . .

Found this at One Man’s Blog.

This video is as cool, or possibly even better, than my previous post on Incredible Japanese Kinetic Machines.

In this video, the creators of this Rube Goldberg machine (a machine that performs a simple task in a complex way) have woven the kinetic reactions all over an entire house!

As it weaves it’s way throughout I can’t help to wonder if someone’s mom is about to come home and freak out at what the kids did when the parents were out of town or something (like with the 60 foot slip-n-slide).

Now, the funny thing is that this video was created by Ben Tyers and Tom Baynham (both scholars of Cambridge University with Master of Engineering Degrees specialising in Manufacturing Engineering) as a demonstration of their ability to create Marketing Virals. I’d say it worked…

http://view.break.com/373381 – Watch more free videos