Rube Goldberg (1883-1970) was a Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist, sculptor, and author. Reuben Lucius Goldberg (Rube Goldberg) was born in San Francisco. His father, a practical man, insisted he go to college to become an engineer.
He continued drawing, and after six months convinced his father that he had to work as an artist.
Through his "INVENTIONS", Rube Goldberg discovered difficult ways to achieve easy results. His cartoons were, as he said, symbols of man's capacity for exerting maximum effort to accomplish minimal results. Rube believed that there were two ways to do things: the simple way and the hard way, and that a surprisingly number of people preferred doing things the hard way.
Rube was sometimes skeptical about technology, which contributed to making his own mechanical inventions primitive and full of human, plant, and animal parts. While most machines work to make difficult tasks simple, his inventions made simple tasks amazingly complex. Dozens of arms, wheels, gears, handles, cups, and rods were put in motion by balls, canary cages, pails, boots, bathtubs, paddles, and live animals for simple tasks like squeezing an orange for juice or closing a window in case it should start to rain before one gets home.
Rube's drawings depict absurdly-connected machines functioning in extremely complex and roundabout ways to produce a simple end result; because of this Rue Goldberg has become associated with any convoluted system of achieving a basic task.
A modern Rube Goldberg Machine
It is very important that you understand: There are no computer graphics or digital tricks in the clip. Everything you see really happened in real time exactly as you see it.
The ad took 606 takes. On the first 605 takes, something, usually very minor, didn't work. They would then have to set the whole thing up again. The crew spent weeks shooting night and day. The film cost six million dollars and took three months to complete including a full engineering of the sequence. Honda executives figure the ad will soon pay for itself simply in "free" viewings (Honda isn't paying a dime to have you watch this commercial!).
There are six and only six hand-made Accords in the world. To the horror of Honda engineers, the filmmakers disassembled two of them to make the film. Everything you see in the film (aside from the walls, floor, ramp, and complete Honda Accord) are parts from those two cars. When the ad was shown to Honda executives, they liked it and commented on how amazing computer graphics have gotten. They fell off their chairs when they found out it was for real.When you click the link below be patient because it is large file.
Check out the EdHeads website on simple machines.
Print all of your score sheets on the printer and place them in your engineer's notebook.
Click "Start" to begin
Complete the first 15 puzzles of "The Incredible Machine"
If you do not already have the program on your computer - Download "The Incredible Machine"
When you finish the grade sheet use the free form machine to build a "Rube Goldberg style" machine that turns on a light bulb. Your final machine should have at least twenty steps.
Once you have competed your machine follow the steps below to document your work.
- Take a picture of your machine.
- Download the "Verification Sheet" by right-clicking the link below and select "save target as". Then save the document to your computer under "My Documents". Make sure you save your finished document with a different file name so other students do not delete it by mistake.
***DO NOT CLICK THE LINK BELOW UNTIL YOU READ THE INSTRUCTIONS ABOVE***
- Once your file is saved click "open" to edit the file using Word.
- Find the picture of your "Incredible Machine" and paste it into the opened word document.
Click here to get you images.
- Now fill out the worksheet and save it to the computer under "My Documents".
- Log in to the Moodle and upload your completed worksheet.
Examples:
Machine Research
Simple Machines Power Point
Video
Pictures
Places to Search
Machine Careers
Print out the Career Research Worksheet
Career Research Worksheet (.pdf)
Using the links below, fill out the Career Research Worksheet. You need to find one career for each of the career educational levels. To find the information pick a career from the careers list and search for it using the Bureau of Labor Statistics link. When you find the information page for the career click on "Training, Other Qualifications, and Advancement". This section will tell you if the career requires a high school, high school plus some college, or a college education. Once you decide what section of the worksheet the career fits in, use the rest of the career information webpage to complete the remaining questions for that section of the worksheet. When the career research worksheet is complete you should have information about three different careers that require different educational levels all related to mechanisms in some way.
Career Research Links
Bureau of Labor Statistics- Occupational Outlook Handbook
More Simple Machines Websites
Explore these sites for more information
Class Project Videos
