PHysical Science Rube Goldberg MAchine

[pattycakes09]

Does anyone or has anyone ever had to home-make a RubeGoldberg machine using the six simple machines? I am totally stuck and confused on this. Please help!!

[swansont]

Haven't made one from scratch, but I bought kits that lets you do similar things. Search for "marble run" at http://www.mindwareonline.com and I also have a chaos tower. I'm not advocating you go and buy either of these, but it will give you an idea of the kinds of components that work.

 

Doing a Google image search on "rube goldberg" might be helpful for inspiration.

 

Marbles rolling down a track, hitting a switch, electromagnet dropping things, dominos, a lever/double-pan balance, a wind-up toy, a mousetrap — all sorts of things you can put together in a chain reaction.

[darkelfv]

Hi, I found this on a google search and i couldn't help myself from replying.

 

I love rube goldberg related stuff and I just entered a contest. Its not open for voteing or anything so im not looking for that sort of thing. I wanted to share the program i made my entry with.

 

Blender 3d (look it up in google) comes with the bullet physics engine. They held a rube goldberg contest and with much joy many people came up with some cool contraptions.

 

I would say this is a perfect easy and free way to set up and test your ideals before trying to make something. It might not be exactly like real physics but i think it would great for planing large projects. Other physics based stuff as well. I made your standard marble drop stuff but it allows for more complex rigging like gears, I have a mechanical walker that runs off of falling balls at the end. Its fully physics driven, so the possiblities are endless, of course complex devices will slow the old box down, but worth it in the end.

 

here is all the entries, they are still judging them in house. fun to watch though.

http://www.continuousphysics.com/mediawiki-1.5.8/index.php?title=PhysicsContest2007

 

Here is a link to blender (bullet can be used with other 3d apps, just easy and already set up with blender)

http://www.blender.org/

 

and my youtube links for version 1 and 2 of my contraption.

 

 

this one was updated in 7 days sence the contest was extended.

 

Please though check out the others too, there are other good entries as well.

Im not for sure who is going to win, I hope to win but there are some stiff compitition.

 

if you have questions please email me at darkelfv@yahoo.com or post here. I suppose email would be better sence blender questions would be off topic.

 

I think its about time i joined a science based forum!! I have tons of ideals about robotics and phyiscs ect.. So much to learn and share.