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For anyone who's never tried: Building Rube Goldberg machines is insanely hard. The idea is to build a machine that looks as difficult and improbable as possibl
by GavinB 17y ago
For anyone who's never tried: Building Rube Goldberg machines is insanely hard. The idea is to build a machine that looks as difficult and improbable as possible. Pieces that are destroyed or completely changed during the operation are par for the course. For each run, the entire machine needs to be reset manually. If one piece fails, you have to reset the whole thing.
The whole design process is basically fighting against yourself--how insane and ridiculous can I get and still have the thing work.
tl;dr We lost the Rube Goldberg machine contest and I'm still bitter.
- jamesbritt 17y agoI grew up playing Mousetrap. That was a sweet game. :)
- macrael 17y agoWas it a game? I don't know anyone who actually played it, we just built the trap and set it off. :)
- jamesbritt 17y agoThat's what made it so sweet. Fun had nothing to do with any rules of play.
- rivo 17y agoThat and the timing of the machines to the song amazes me the most.
- samdk 17y agoI've built two, and both were completely trivial compared to this. One took me about a week, the other took me and two other people about a month. (In both cases, working an hour or two each day.) I can't imagine the work that must have gone into this.