Rube Goldberg machines in the world.

Photography-themed Rube Goldberg Machine.

2011-07-14T03:00:00.000-07:00

Special thanks to everyone who helped make this video possible!! Check out the blog post above for more information. - 2dphotography.ca

Logos School - Rube Goldberg Project

2010-05-26T02:48:00.000-07:00

The Logos Physics class of 2010 created this Rube Goldberg Project from mostly cardboard, duct tape, and odds & ends. After opening a door, it turns on the light, and runs through 20 steps before closing the door and turning off the light. The bathroom theme should be obvious.

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D&D Rube Goldberg Dice Roller

2010-05-26T02:43:00.000-07:00

Smartphone Rube Golberg Machine

2010-04-27T01:58:00.000-07:00

Vodafone Ad Uses Rube Goldberg Machine to Show Awesomeness of Apps

Качественно и быстро изготовят шкафы купе киев, чернигов, бровары.

National Rube Goldberg Machine Contest 2010 Preview

2010-03-19T07:46:00.000-07:00

The Rube Goldberg competition, sponsored by Phi Chapter of Theta Tau fraternity, rewards machines that most effectively combine creativity with inefficiency and complexity. The task this year is to dispense an appropriate amount of sanitizer into a hand. The 2010 National contest is March 27 at the Purdue University Armory.

http://www.purdue.edu/

Владивосток и наука

Каталог шкафов купе Заказать двухдверный шкаф купе в Киеве

Rube Goldberg Machine in ads: Sony Bravia - Domino City

2010-03-04T07:07:00.000-08:00

Металлоконструкции на братиславской

Pretty rainbow - RGM video

2010-03-04T06:59:00.000-08:00

Dominoes Everywhere - RGM video

2010-03-04T06:34:00.000-08:00

Заказать шкафы купе Киев по телефону. Также вы можете посмотреть дизайн шкафа купе

OK Go - This Too Shall Pass - Rube Goldberg Machine version

2010-03-03T09:17:00.000-08:00

Directed by James Frost, OK Go and Syyn Labs. Produced by Shirley Moyers. The official video for the recorded version of "This Too Shall Pass" off of the album "Of the Blue Colour of the Sky". The video was filmed in a two story warehouse, in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, CA. The "machine" was designed and built by the band, along with members of Synn Labs ( http://syynlabs.com/ ) over the course of several months.

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Kenny Webster and Adam Brown's rube goldberg machine

2010-02-26T04:42:00.000-08:00

Строительные и ремонтные работы

Rube Goldberg Physics 2010 (Mrs. Davis' class )

2010-02-25T03:14:00.000-08:00

Students and Rube Goldberg Machines

2010-02-22T08:24:00.000-08:00

Students explore the concept of Rube Goldberg Machines in a number of ways.

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Rube Goldberg Machine 3D concept

2010-02-19T05:54:00.000-08:00

This is our version of a Rube Goldberg Machine, written & rendered with Povray and ffmpeg, made for a university project. Many thx to the team, many thx to jolin newcomer for making free music, downloadable at jamendo:
http://www.jamendo.com/de/track/464039
song: jolin newcomer gladiolus Rag, Scott Joplin

чернигов дизайн

Rube Goldberg Machine (Turns On Ipod)

2008-08-29T04:46:00.000-07:00

Строительная омпания ВЕстБудИнвест выполнит в кратчайшие сроки ремонт ангаров Бровары по очень выгодным ценам. Также специалисты компании построят для вас Дома из карпатского леса под ключ.

Rube Goldberg toast

2008-08-29T04:45:00.000-07:00

A rube goldberg machine that starts with a rocket and end with a piece of toast

Zippo Rube Goldberg Machine

2008-06-11T08:19:00.000-07:00

1) Dominoes fall, final one landing on a lever.
2)Lever knocks over cup full of marbles, filling up a plastic baggie.
3)Baggie pulls downwards on a pulley system, lifting up a staple from foam board.
4)The staple had been previously holding down a lever system. Now free to fall, the heavy end of the lever falls
5) The pencil eraser hits the talk button on cell phone A, calling cell phone B.
6) Cell phone B vibrates, knocking the Pink Hot Wheel Car down the track, and around the loop, bumping into the Flame Hot Wheel Car.
7) The Flame Hot Wheel Car is shot through the accelerator, hitting a loop of string.
8) The loop of string comes off the nail, allowing Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince to free-fall.
9) Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince falls on a plank of wood
10) The plank of wood is forced down, spinning the wheel and igniting the Zippo lighter.

GPS for the iPhone 3G
Pool 2.1 download

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Phone Answering Rube Goldberg Machine

2008-06-11T08:11:00.000-07:00

Jensen, Rickie and Danny's Rube Goldberg Machine designed to answer a cell phone.

Bijak will compete for Germany in Olympics
social ads: The Mess

Water planting rube goldberg

2008-05-16T03:20:00.000-07:00

Yunmi,Kailee,Aby,Lucy

Rube Goldberg Water Self Service Project

2008-05-16T03:19:00.000-07:00

Rube Goldberg Energy Transfer Machine

2008-04-30T09:28:00.000-07:00

The main idea of a Rube Goldberg Machine is to accomplish a trivial task in the most difficult way. This may include such things as burning string, pendulums, marble runs, etc. The task for this machine was to put out a regular sized tea candle. This is a standard physics class assignment.

Rube Goldberg Junkyard War

2008-04-30T09:27:00.001-07:00

Rube Goldberg Machine: Cymbal Smash

2008-04-30T09:25:00.000-07:00

Rube Goldberg Project for physics class

2008-04-30T09:23:00.001-07:00

Xmas Rube Goldberg machine from MythBusters

2008-04-30T09:21:00.000-07:00

Mr. Case physics Rube Goldberg

2008-03-07T02:27:00.000-08:00

Rube Goldberg device/Critical Path project

2008-03-07T02:26:00.001-08:00

Polot Rube Goldberg IX

2008-03-01T04:34:00.000-08:00

Rube Goldberg Machine 3

Simple Rube Golberg 3D animaton

2008-03-01T04:23:00.000-08:00

Short Rube Golberg 3D animaton done using 3dsmax.

Natalie Portman & Dustin Hoffman for New York Magazine

rube goldberg machine science project.

2008-01-18T04:13:00.000-08:00

Mario Contraption Project

2008-01-18T04:12:00.000-08:00

Kinda decent contraption project for Mr. Sha's Physics AP B Class.

Rube Goldberg Project for Physics

2008-01-18T04:10:00.000-08:00

This is a student project in the exploration of energy transformations via a Rube Goldberg process.

Discovery Casting Rube Goldberg Reality Show

2007-12-04T04:40:00.000-08:00

I'm generally not one to the get behind reality TV shows. Honestly, since the damned things first exploded in this country, I've considered them a blight on the cesspool that is American popular culture. That said, occasionally I catch wind of a concept that I can't help but love.

Take, for example, Super Rubes (currently in the casting process). Stupid name, sure, but according to Boing Boing, it has the sort of setup only a bona fide dork could love. A one-hour weekly show set to be broadcast on the Discovery Channel, Super Rubes features a team of inventors who create massive "Chain Reaction Machines" to accomplish simple tasks, like turning on lights, using as many steps as possible.

The name, of course, is an homage to the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Rube Goldberg, whose strip was based on such outlandish devices. His name has since become the default description for these sorts of machines, and has lent itself to contests in which they're concocted.

It's only fitting that someone invoke his spirit to harness a reality show for the sake of honest-to-god entertainment--perhaps the most inefficient bit of machinery yet.

Link realitywanted.com

Cological Marble Run Construction Set from ThinkGeek

2007-11-21T04:33:00.000-08:00

Ever heard of Rube Goldburg? I’ve discovered that people who don’t know who Rube Goldberg is know of his work. He was the one who drew these odd contraptions that worked in odd ways, such as a roller skate attacked to a needle, which pops a balloon, which in turn does something else.

Goldburg’s contraptions always started with a ball rolling, and that is what the Cological Marble Run Construction Set is supposed to play off of. This little playset from Think Geek will give you everything that you want for ball-rolling action better than the Mouse Trap game. This will especially be popular with the Lego crowd, as they can make machines that work with no bumpy parts to inhibit the rolling of the marble.

The Cological (I have no idea what that means) Marble Run Construction Set has twenty-three types of mechanisms such as little cars or mallets until it ends with a tiny flag that comes up. There isn’t really much as far as instruction is concerned, just to let the user know what type of toys they have to play with. I believe it is up to the user to let their imagination come up with great toys.

If you want it, you can get it now for $69.95 from thinkgeek.com

Cological Marble Run Construction Set In Action

See also:
Rube Goldberg Sandwich Maker
Nesquik Rube-Goldberg Machine

The skinny

2007-10-30T03:29:00.000-07:00

Trouble brewing
Sam Adams May let Sam Adams use his name
The makers of Sam Adams beer didn't find any humor in the fact that the company name was being evoked in a mayoral election in Portland, Ore. So they sent a letter, asking for ceasing and desisting, and surrendering of the Web addresses samadamsformayor.com and mayorsamadams.com. "Boston Beer has used the trademarks 'Sam Adams' and 'Samuel Adams' since 1984," the letter said. The thing is, the guy running for mayor in Portland is, in fact, named Sam Adams. "I've been using it since 1963," he says. The brew company says it didn't know there was an actual Sam Adams running and is willing to discuss the possibility of Adams using his name in his campaign.

Fire alarm
Family bird is now the family's hero
The fire alarm was going off in the Muncie, Ind., home of Shannon Conwell and his 9-year-old son last Friday. And the fact that they didn't hear it could have been tragic, except for the fact that their Amazon parrot, Peanut, did hear it. And Peanut likes to imitate sounds he hears. So about 3 a.m., with the Conwells asleep on the couch - they had been watching a movie - Peanut started mocking the fire alarm. "He was really screaming his head off," Conwell said. "I grabbed my son and my bird, and got out of the house." Conwell said that if they had made it to bed that night, things might've turned out different, because they may not have heard the alarm or the bird.

Autos and animals
Fiat more roomy than ever guessed
A man in rural South Africa tried to steal two cows and two goats on Thursday. It was probably not premeditated, because he tried to steal them by cramming them into a Fiat Uno. The Uno is a small car, not typically used to transport livestock ... or even particularly large people. Residents of KwaZulu-Natal alerted police to the situation, and the man tried to speed away, a task made more difficult by the fact that the car was carrying two cows and two goats. While he couldn't outrun the police in the car, he found that he could outrun them on foot, and made off into the bushes. Police are still looking for him. But the animals are safe.

Be on lookout for kamikaze squirrels
Lindsey Millar, 23, thought it was weird enough that her 2006 Toyota Camry was on fire in the driveway of her Bayonne, N.J., home last Wednesday. Then she found out it was the work of a kamikaze squirrel. Firefighters say they found evidence that the squirrel, who has not been named, was on a power line above the car, and chewed through the line. As if part of a natural Rube Goldberg device, the squirrel proceeded to catch on fire, falling from the power line, hitting top of the car, sliding into the engine compartment ... and blowing up the car. Ta-da! "It's something to laugh about once she has a new car," Lindsay's brother Tony told the Jersey Journal. "It's not funny yet."

LED Weekend
Sandwich Maker

Awash in freshwater data streams

2007-10-30T03:27:00.000-07:00

Mike Broomall and three of his colleagues at the Stroud Water Research Center in Avondale examined the green garbage bin with the pensive concentration of a team of surgeons.
"All I know is this thing's got to be tight," said Broomall, a research technician, fitting a black drainage pipe through a hole at the bottom of the trash can. The bins eventually will be used as quarantine tanks to study four species of fish native to the Susquehanna River.

The staff at the Stroud Research Center has something of a Rube Goldberg complex. They can turn a Coleman Cooler and some plastic tubing like the kind sold at Home Depot into a cozy love nest for breeding mayflies.

This ingenuity (or eccentricity) takes place daily at the water-research laboratory, tucked away on 900 acres of hilly farmland in southern Chester County.

Stroud scientists have studied the world's streams, rivers, and watersheds since Lyndon B. Johnson was president. This year the center is celebrating its 40th anniversary, and next Sunday it will be one of several environmental and conservation groups to benefit from the Pennsylvania Hunt Cup steeplechase races.

Running on a $4 million budget and a staff of 50, researchers here have investigated the quality of New York's water supply, the Amazon River, the tropical streams in northern Costa Rica, and the Schuylkill. Stroud likely is the only research institution in North America focused solely on freshwater streams and rivers, according to Bern Sweeney, president and director.

At the heart of Stroud's research is the White Clay Creek. Scientists have catalogued the stream's temperature, flow, chemistry, and biology every day for the last 40 years. They compare these data to those collected on every other freshwater body they study, including the Amazon. The shin-deep stream is about seven feet wide and looks surprisingly small for having such a big role.

Stroud scientists also recently finished examining the water quality of the Schuylkill. According to Sweeney, 50 percent of the water quality has been lost, mostly because of deforestation and industrial and residential development. The goal for researchers, Sweeney said, is to use this data to figure how to allow for human activity and development without compromising water quality.

The center is also experimenting with planting 6,000 trees along the east branch of the Brandywine Creek to act as pollution buffers.

Constructed to look like a Quaker farmhouse, the Stroud Center has a brick and clapboard exterior and a gabled roof. But inside, abstract murals on the walls add contrast to the rustic wood and stonework.

These contrasts between urban and rural, modern and quaint, are apparent throughout the center. The scientists' offices are cluttered with stacks of papers and books, looking like typical academic suites except for the knee-high water boots stashed under desks.

One of the original founders, William Bolton Stroud, for whom the center is named, wore work boots and khakis to the center. Stroud walked a mile to the center from his farm, using a machete to cut down plants that were harmful to the creek.

When he wasn't hacking weeds, he enjoyed a buttoned-down role on the board of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia.

Stroud's wife, Joan, helped champion the center's educational programs. Stroud currently educates 3,000 students each year and provides professional development to more than 200 teachers.

The other cofounder, Dr. Ruth Patrick, was in her 60s when she helped establish the center. Patrick split her time between the water-research center and serving as the head of the limnology department, which studies bodies of freshwater, at the Academy of Natural Sciences. Sweeney, who joined the center in his early 20s as a University of Pennsylvania graduate student, recalled that Patrick had a remarkable intensity and vivacity.

"When she talked to us, it would never be, 'What did you think of the Phillies game?' " said Sweeney. "It was always, 'What new have you learned today?' She was challenging us every day."

The Strouds passed away - Joan in 1985 and William in 2005. Patrick recently celebrated her 100th birthday and still has an office at the academy.

Sweeney said he hoped the center's work would help ease a "global freshwater crisis."

American consumption depends on 150 gallons per person a day, he said, whether it's for drinking, manufacturing automobile tires, or producing light bulbs. By comparison, people in India use 10 gallons a day. Sweeney said it's imperative to conserve and maintain high-quality freshwater.

"Every drop counts," he said.

LED Weekend

2007-10-26T00:36:00.000-07:00

About midway through last weekend, it suddenly occurred to me that LED-based lighting was following us everywhere, and that it was significantly enhancing pretty much everything we did. In the areas that solid state lighting had not arrived yet, its presence was sorely missed (including in some headlights that got left on, necessitating a helpful jump-start from a fellow fisherman at a chilly pond; a bit lower power drain than the vintage 2003 halogens would have come in handy).

The first stunning encounter came at rock concert. It has probably been 17 or so years since we last enjoyed getting our nervous system scrambled by some serious decibels, but having worked security at a string of concerts back in college, light-duty earplugs were standard equipment for the whole family. That can take some intensity out of the event but it's an ROI tradeoff I'll stand by. The first warm-up band had some LED floodlights that were pretty much placed for the lighting needs of the band, as well as some additional white sets to shine brightly at the audience. Light where you want it, and it stands up to repeated assembly, disassembly and travel. It only makes sense.

The second warm-up added some color changing to the mix, so no surprises there. Once the headliners took the stage, there was a wow-factor that screamed "you couldn't do that kind of thing in the old days". The stage backdrop included two lower video screens, stage left and right, and a third centered above those. As we would discover soon enough, each screen was outlined with full-color LED-driven light pipes. In addition to the pipes, there were a series of display panels measuring probably 4 by 8 feet each (1.3m x 2.6m for the metric system folks) located to each side of the upper screen, as well as below it between the lower screens. Initially, they provided a lot of white light, but progressed into rhythmic color changing patterns and waves flowing across those and the video screens, and then into a variety of designs and scenes. At one point, stunning bluish-white lighting bolts angled down along the displays, including a vivid indigo corona and appropriate "flash scatter" that just looked real. The music was great, but the lighting made it a total experience. I've read about concert lighting in our own news, but this was an order of magnitude more than expected. Not simply smooth RGB, or extensions of the displays, this was nearly a show on its own. We've come a long way since the Laserium concerts first showed up at the San Francisco planetarium.

Standing in line on the way to say hello to the band and get a T-shirt autographed, the couple behind us mentioned something called the Maker's Fair being held this same weekend. "You mean God is having a party at the fairgrounds?" I asked. "Sort of, but it's Maker Faire and more of a serious geek-fest, with all kinds of inventions, stuff blowing up, guys who play with scary turbocharged firepots and other craziness that's hard to describe, but worth the price of admission," they replied. The event was making its first foray outside of the San Francisco bay area with a trip to Austin, so what the heck.

The fair was scattered around a good chunk of the county fairgrounds here, and the first invention we encountered was a 10-foot tall, LED-based color-changing interactive Buddha. Touch different places and Buddha would glow in those spots, or set off on his own course of psychedelic "invisible man" renditions. From there, we simply had to take a few steps in any direction to encounter items that simply wouldn't have existed without LEDs. Brainwave biofeedback display systems, twinkling wall art and firefly emulators. (The builder commented that he was from Washington State, and they didn't have fireflies, so he studied the twinkling patterns of a herd/flock of Japanese fireflies, programmed it into a microcontroller, mounted LED die to the end of fine wires, gave the assembly a battery and put it into a jar - instant summertime on the bedstand.) At the same stand, they were displaying a bicycle wheel that served as an LED-based display screen. All you needed to do was pedal and you generated the requisite electricity to power the LEDs and controller, which automatically adjusted things for the current rotational speed and presented both static and moving RGB images.

Nearby was the guy with an LED display cascading along his back, and overall, many of the displays were lit with small LED spotlights (again, hard to break when traveling). In the second pavilion, you could purchase your own LED Christmas tree kit (soldering iron not included). One community college teacher was demonstrating weatherproof "social statement" LEDs that were simply an LED soldered to a nearly used-up button battery and pasted to a magnet so you could signify your favorite protest in a nondestructive way using recycled materials (only in Austin, Seattle or San Francisco, one suspects. The ones that look like bombs seem to be reserved for Boston).

LEDs even made it into the 50,000 lb full-scale "Mousetrap" game. If you're not familiar with the particulars, it's a board game in which you slowly build a Rube Goldberg marble rolling machine to trigger a little mouse-catching cage to drop. In this case, the marble was a bowling ball, and the mousetrap a 4000 lb concrete block that gave a ground-shaking "whump" onto an old vacuum cleaner and an LED illuminated mouse robot (which ended up being ejected from the crushing, merely losing its battery, but not for lack of trying to be in the right place at the right time). Previous recipients of the trap included a bicycle helmet (ouch) and a washing machine.

The most interesting realization was how many of those inventions didn't merely have a solid state light source added to them, but were created because there was such a thing as an LED to invent them with. It's analogous to the fact that while accounting existed long before the PC came into being, but video gaming did not. An application was created because there was technology to invent it with. The fair was a concentrated dose of "look what we can do now" based on the fact that the LED/SSL industry had produced bright, efficient, reliable solid state light sources, apparently at a reasonable enough price for them to be everywhere in these entertaining realms.

Since we have real fireflies around the yard, all that was left that day was to go home an turn on the little "airplane on a stick" next to our bedside and watch the LEDs pulse out cosmic patterns... dreaming of the applications none of us have thought of.

Rube Goldberg Sandwich Maker
London Olympic flame to be carbon neutral

Rube Goldberg Sandwich Maker

2007-10-19T03:20:00.000-07:00

This was a project for a 3d animation class to create a rube goldberg machine. i know it would never work in real life and it is by no means accurate, but it looks pretty cool i think.

Rube Goldberg Device from the movie Waiting

2007-10-19T03:15:00.000-07:00

A Rube Goldberg device from the end of the movie "Waiting." This device was made to simply pour beer into a mug, initiated from setting an empty mug onto a pedestal. Very cool!

Nesquik Rube-Goldberg Machine :)

2007-09-27T04:19:00.000-07:00

Amazing video work tim forts kinetic
How to build a Rube Goldberg Machine?

Kettering University Senior Design Rube Goldberg

2007-09-27T04:17:00.000-07:00

Professor Kaiser's summer 07 rube goldberg Senior Design by Lucy Nguyen, Seth Billings, Takudzwa Mhlanga, and Jeff Peterson (more)

rube goldberg - SOU 2004 Theater Tech ...
The Incredible Machine

mobile puzzle game based on Rube Goldberg machines concept

2007-09-27T04:13:00.000-07:00

Mechanismo Trailer
A new mobile puzzle game based on Rube Goldberg machines concept.

MythBusters Rube Goldberg Machine

2007-09-10T04:19:00.000-07:00

THE BEST MAZE EVER!!! COOL :)

2007-08-29T05:26:00.001-07:00

Amazing video work - Tim Fort's Kinetic Art

2007-08-29T05:22:00.000-07:00

A video project I worked on in New York Mills, Minnesota and featuring a wide assortment of my kinetic-art techniques.

Japanese Dominos - Rube Golberg machines

2007-08-01T07:35:00.000-07:00

These guys do dominose all through their house, amazing!

Goldberg type machine 6

2007-08-01T07:32:00.001-07:00

A rube goldberg type machine that me and my friends made.

Funny Rube Golberg machine - the dest :)

2007-07-30T00:24:00.001-07:00

Soundtrack - Musical rolling ball kinetic sculpture

2007-07-30T00:23:00.001-07:00

This musical kinetic sculpture by Los Angeles metal sculptor Bruce Gray was commissioned by The Rolling Ball Museum in Seoul, Korea.

rube goldberg - SOU 2004 Theater Tech ...

2007-07-30T00:21:00.000-07:00

The final project for the Theater Tech Class of 2004 at Southern Oregon University. The machine worked once, but we never actually got it ... all » on film because of time constraints. the most successful run on film is at 14:00 on this video.

Every step has been bumpy for Road Home

2007-07-29T23:36:00.000-07:00

On a scorching day last August, after months of haranguing Congress for flood recovery aid, Gov. Kathleen Blanco came to New Orleans to hail the opening of the first homeowner assistance center to serve beneficiaries of the newly minted Road Home program.

"Full speed ahead," the governor vowed, beaming over the impending recovery. "This is a most joyful day."

She promised to rebuild Louisiana "safer, stronger, smarter," with incentives for displaced homeowners to return, penalties for those who left and stringent protections against fraud.

Blanco seemed to have reason to rejoice: She had just emerged from a pitched political scrap with Republican-dominated Washington to secure the recovery money. She had boldly accused the White House of "choosing between our children" when the government told her to run a limited program with $6.2 billion. She had persuaded officials to increase that figure to $10.4 billion, using $7.5 billion of that for direct payments to homeowners.

But that sweltering August day might have been the last joyful one the Road Home ever gave Blanco. More important, the majority of flooded homeowners still await the joyful day when their check arrives -- if ever, given the budget shortfall in the program of up to $5 billion.

Nearly a year and countless bureaucratic foul-ups after Blanco's triumphant proclamation, the state lacks the money to pay more than a third of eligible applicants. And with the last day to file a Road Home application approaching, neither has the state succeeded in handing out the money already in hand: Only about a quarter of eligible applicants have collected grants, compared with 83 percent of eligible flood victims in neighboring Mississippi.

Blanco has countered that Mississippi, by virtue of its Republican ties to then-GOP-controlled Washington, received far more recovery cash and cooperation last year from the federal establishment. To date, Mississippi has collected about $5.5 billion in federal blocks grants, while Louisiana -- with four times the number of storm victims -- has received only about double that, at $10.4 billion.

Fairness questions aside, critics say the Blanco administration fumbled the handling of the federal aid it did secure. Hoping both to secure maximum money for rebuilding and ensure residents behaved properly by rebuilding their destroyed homes, she created the quintessential paternalistic government program: aiming to please every conceivable constituent, bloated by a micromanaging bureaucracy and bound in a thicket of attached strings.

In tackling what seemed the simplest of tasks -- handing out the federal government's money -- the state instead designed an expensive exercise in social engineering and forensic auditing of every cent paid out.

Over-sensitive to Louisiana's reputation for graft and seeking to reassure Washington, state officials crafted layer upon layer of verification to discourage fraud, including finger-printing. And fearing applicants would take the money and run, rather than rebuild, state officials gummed up the bureaucratic works with penalties for leaving the state and an installment program that dribbled out money to those who stayed, sending them jumping through more hoops -- even after they signed on the dotted line -- to prove work was being done on their homes.

"What the state created was a Rube Goldberg machine -- you drop a ball in the top, and it goes through all these tubes and levers and a wheel that spins," said Nell Bolton, a leader of the Jeremiah Group, a faith-based organization that has taken on the role of Road Home watchdog.

Each lever and wheel -- home appraisals, insurance payment verifications, fraud safeguards, spats with federal authorities about grant rules, and so on -- created a bottleneck that to this day keeps the bulk of grants stymied. The design of Louisiana's program, many argue, produced the opposite of the intended effect: repelling trustworthy homeowners who were already predisposed to rebuild.

Robby Knecht, an eastern New Orleans homeowner, is a case in point. During 10 months of delays over a dispute about his appraised value, he had to split his seven children between two FEMA trailers and move the family back into a still-unfinished house. He said struggles with Road Home did more to weaken their bond with Louisiana than Katrina ever did.

"It's depressing," he said. "I could have gone anywhere. ... We're both native New Orleanians, and we want to be here. But my wife, especially, she talks about leaving."

Because of the shortfall, an estimated 50,000 eligible applicants, out of an expected total of about 140,000, will have to depend on a bailout from a wary Congress.

At the time the state crafted Road Home rules, the Blanco administration might have had reason to believe a cavalry of federal cash would cover any shortfall. After all, President Bush's point man for Gulf Coast recovery, Donald Powell, had implied as much during tense negotiations about the initial federal commitment of $6.2 billion, which state officials at the time called grossly inadequate.

"After that plan is in place, and there is a need for more money, I can assure you we will go back after that's done and work hand in hand with the leadership of Louisiana to ask for more money," Powell said. The Bush administration "would be open to many more needs for housing and infrastructure, or any other needs that the good people of Louisiana believe are appropriate."

And Powell's comments, of course, came on the heels of Bush's own commitment at Jackson Square to do "whatever it takes" to rebuild Louisiana.

After Powell lent his support, Congress allocated an additional $4.2 billion, bringing Louisiana's recovery kitty to $10.4 billion, for everything from housing relief to infrastructure.

Still, documents and interviews with state and federal officials show the state knew or should have known from the start that even that increased allocation would never cover the program they promised back home.

The state's own early estimates -- based on FEMA damage estimates later found to be too low -- pegged the program at about $2 billion short of covering the cost. The problem would get worse, as Louisiana added more benefits for overlooked niche constituencies and as the devastation and costs to repair it all proved worse than anticipated.

In early 2006, during the negotiations with Powell for additional housing money, the Louisiana Recovery Authority used consultants to work up a detailed cost estimate for its planned homeowner assistance program. Working with the FEMA data, the consultants concluded that Louisiana would need $9.4 billion to compensate 128,000 homeowners, at a rate of about $70,000 per grant, along with some money to pay a private contractor.

Yet the Blanco administration settled for a $7.5 billion housing program and profusely thanked the American taxpayers and their congressional representatives. Last July, Blanco praised Congress and the Bush administration for "the funding we need to run our full program."

A year later, it turns out the "full program" will really cost up to $5 billion more.

One Democratic congressional aide, who declined to be quoted by name opposing Blanco, said Democrats on Capitol Hill puzzled over the governor's gleeful acceptance of the lower amount offered by Powell and Congress -- and wondered how the state would make it work.

"Some of us were really surprised the governor was so happy," the unnamed aide said. "We were also surprised they (the state) were able to drop their number and make the program work. ... The way to do it was to take that and immediately say, 'OK, we still need more.' "

Instead, the state started designing programs that ultimately would cost far more -- in some cases ignoring the financial parameters set by Powell in closed-door meetings. Blanco's administration made a series of politically popular promises, vowing to help seemingly every storm victim: landlords, business owners, the New Orleans power company and a university hospital.

Two decisions in particular made the tab skyrocket, ensuring an eventual shortfall. The state added loans of as much as $50,000 for low-income homeowners, a decision that added an estimated $1.7 billion to estimated Road Home payouts.

And a controversial decision by state leaders to cover homes damaged only by wind -- which many argued should have been shouldered by insurance companies -- put an even heavier dent in the Road Home budget. The state made that call even after Powell declined its plea for money to cover wind damage, Powell said in an interview.

The state's initial request specifically calculated wind-only compensation costs for 19,000 homes at $1.1 billion, a figure that would prove far too low. The FEMA estimates used at the time underestimated the number of wind-damaged homes by about 20,000, according to the latest figures, a gaffe that doubled the state's estimated obligation to homes that didn't flood.

Amy Liu, an analyst at the Brookings Institution, said Blanco defied the White House's calls for a limited flood-relief program because of political pressure from south-central and southwest Louisiana. Liu said Blanco's team deserves credit for creating a smart program early on, but the local politics compromised the original design.

"I don't doubt the political pressure they were under, but in the myopia of serving such a broad demand, they may have undermined their credibility in Washington," she said.

Last summer, Steve Alison, who lost his Gretna home in Hurricane Katrina, kept a close eye on the state's housing aid plans and rushed to be one of the first to apply when Blanco announced the birth of the Road Home.

"I thought it would be within 30 days," he said. "At first it moved really quickly, I had the interview, they came in and estimated my damage, took pictures, but then they started the snafus."

While the state proved adept at adding beneficiaries to the aid program, it couldn't manage to get most of them paid. Struggling to speed payments while complying with hundreds of intricate policies and procedures, ICF International, the private contractor, soon found itself the early scapegoat for delays and screw-ups that started even before the state could write its first check to a flood victim.

In response, the contractor, under pressure from Blanco over delays, devised "preliminary award letters." The letters backfired, immediately infuriating applicants, both because they seemed to mean nothing -- they promised no specific amount of cash, by no specific date -- and because more than a quarter of the first letters included errors, often obvious assaults on common sense.

In one case that became a cause celebre, Saul and Mildred Rubin, who are in their 90s, received a letter denying the grant claim on the basis that their Lakeview house -- which had taken on 9 feet of water -- had no damage.

A second backlash came at the roughly 60 steps of verification, which added months to the process.

On Dec. 18, 2006 -- before even one-tenth of 1 percent of Road Home applicants had made it to a grant closing -- state Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-New Orleans, met with state legislators and the governor's staff about the delays. He walked out in a huff over Road Home's seemingly endless checks and balances.

"You're treating homeowners like thieves and children," Richmond recalled telling the assembled officials.

The administration had worried, understandably, about reassuring federal politicians that Louisiana would prove a good steward of their money, given the state's legendary history of corruption. But the Blanco administration seemed to have grafted that reputation -- earned by the state's politicians -- onto work-a-day homeowners, generally the most law-abiding and trustworthy citizens in the state, Richmond said.

"People called us thieves for so long, the governor began to believe her people were thieves," Richmond said in an interview.

Neither could Richmond and other critics understand the complex array of incentives, penalties and auditing procedures that sought to ensure residents rebuilt their destroyed homes. They viewed Louisiana residents, and particularly those in New Orleans, as already deeply rooted to their communities, both by family ties and unique culture. Their collective recommendation: Just compensate people for their loss -- as quickly as possible -- and most will decide to stay.

According to the 2000 U.S. census, 77 percent of New Orleans residents were born in Louisiana, the highest nativity rate of any major U.S. city. What's more, geographer Richard Campanella finds Katrina's flooding was worse in the parts of New Orleans with the fewest out-of-state transplants.

That makes it all the more confounding that Blanco designed a Road Home program geared so much toward keeping New Orleanians from fleeing, said John Lovett, associate law professor at Loyola University.

"The silver lining was those people were the most likely to stay, if only you would have given them a chance," Lovett said. "It's just tragic that Blanco and her consultants didn't appreciate this unique affinity New Orleanians have for their long-time community."

According to interviews with hundreds of frustrated Road Home applicants, many grant delays seemed driven by simple confusion about program rules, both on the part of applicants and program managers -- confusion that often extended to senior state officials who enacted and enforced the policies.

Road Home applicants also report being treated with skepticism every step of the way, and they resented the implication that they needed to be prodded to rebuild their lives in the same communities where they grew up.

Knecht, one of thousands whose application dragged on for months -- despite scores of promises, misinformation and unreturned phone calls -- looked at Mississippi's record of faster payouts with envy.

"And their homeowners weren't fingerprinted, with a mug shot -- like we're going to prison," he said.

The Louisiana Recovery Authority's own surveys had shown in March 2006 -- months before the administration finalized policies -- that the vast majority of Louisianians wanted to rebuild in place. Yet the Road Home still created complex functions to keep homeowners from leaving and, once they chose to stay, to make sure they used the grants only to rebuild.

"I had no problem with verifying that I deserved the money, but then they're going to be Big Brother about how I spend it? That's where I got upset," Alison said.

Mississippi's similar homeowner assistance effort has always served as a bellwether for Louisiana's recovery efforts, with Blanco's administration alleging the state has gotten political favoritism and Louisiana's critics holding up Mississippi as a model of efficient government.

For a while this spring, Louisiana leaders avoided comparisons with Mississippi, which seemed to be a dead end in Washington. But finally, with the Road Home budget falling flat in the past two months, state leaders are back to comparing the states again, wailing about Mississippi's privilege and alleging GOP plots to make Republican Gov. Haley Barbour into a hero and Democrat Blanco a failure.

"God bless them, they suffered too, but not to the extent that we did," Blanco said of Mississippi in a recent interview.

Blanco has a point: Katrina and Rita hit larger population centers here and exacted an extra punishment on New Orleans because of the failure of federally built levees.

Donna Sanford, the disaster recovery director at the Mississippi Development Authority, said she feels for Louisiana's Road Home predicament but is proud that her state has generally avoided the same fiscal fate. Sanford attributes it to more than just the politics cited bitterly by Blanco. She credits Barbour's leadership and willingness to make hard choices about which victims would be prioritized for speedier payouts.

The plan, as Sanford describes it, was to split the homeowner aid program into "buckets" of beneficiaries and start paying the next bucket only once it was clear how much money was left over.

The first bucket paid for homes outside the flood plain damaged by flood surge. That amounted to about 16,000 homeowners with insurance, who should get a little more than $1 billion in grants. With $3 billion budgeted for homeowner relief, the state then confidently moved onto the next bucket, expected to be about 14,000 insured properties within the flood zone. From the beginning, it refused to cover uninsured homeowners, while Louisiana simply assessed a 30-percent penalty for those without coverage.

The initial FEMA estimates in December 2005, which have come into serious question now, showed 331,070 Louisiana homes damaged by the storms and 157,914 in Mississippi. Even with more than $5 billion in the first congressional handout, Mississippi decided it didn't have enough to cover them all.

Rather than using the FEMA numbers to exclude those with minor damage -- as Louisiana did, only to have to add an estimated 15,000 homes classified incorrectly by FEMA -- Mississippi excluded wind-only claims and prioritized those who weren't required to have flood insurance. From there, Mississippi also cut out wealthier families, limiting eligibility within the flood zone to about 9,500 families making less than 120 percent of the area median income, or about $58,000 for a family of four.

And one more bucket of spending in Mississippi provides a stark contrast to Louisiana: its $48 million Phase One contract with Resnick Group. That accounts for less than 2 percent of the state's $3 billion housing aid package.

Louisiana will pay contractor ICF International as much as $756 million to run a $7.5 billion homeowners budget and an $869 million small rental aid program. That's 9 percent of the total budget going to the contractor.

Twenty-two months after Katrina, more than 127,000 Road Home applicants -- more than the total number of homeowners FEMA initially found eligible -- still have no federal aid. And that reality will likely make it more difficult to get quick action from a Congress in the throes of budget constraints and Katrina fatigue, and, to be sure, less than impressed by the state's management of Road Home.

Only recently, and under federal pressure, did the state reform the verification process, and then only to reduce the number of steps from 60 to 42. That action appears to have speeded payments considerably.

In another sea change, the federal Department of Housing and Urban development pressured reluctant state officials, abandoned the practice of parceling out grants in stages from an escrow account -- with the first installment no more than $7,500, an amount exasperated rebuilders said couldn't even get them started.

Soon, the state changed to a lump-sum compensation grant, similar to Mississippi's. With that and other changes, money finally started to flow in April, when the program closed 8,000 grants, followed by 10,000 in May and 10,300 in June. But when the money started moving, it then became clear the federal spigot would run dry long before the state fulfilled its promises to victims.

Shaken by the shattering of a signature piece of her program and the firestorm of criticism it prompted, Blanco quit her re-election bid a few days later, saying she hoped to remove politics from the state's recovery efforts.

Blanco recently went to Washington, asking Congress to kick in another $3 billion to $4 billion, and has offered to match it with $1 billion in state money.

At the least, the state will have to wait until a congressional spending bill this fall, which means more uncertainty for weary homeowners, many of whom can't rebuild without the promised help or have already given up and left the state.

Susan McClain said she's giving Louisiana, the state her family has called home "forever," one more chance -- but she isn't optimistic.

She got a Road Home check this month, but the day before the closing it was cut by $55,000. The Road Home suddenly decided to cut her home's estimated square footage by a third, with no explanation. Closing agents told her she had better take the money or risk getting nothing because of the shortfall, something she called "the bait-and-switch with threats." The surprise slashing forced her to scrap plans to raise her Gentilly house above the 7-foot level that Katrina inundated.

"The next flood will destroy my home, and then I'm leaving this state," she said. "The corps flooded me last time, but now the state won't let me rebuild to where it needs to be."

Some of the other 39,000 who have been lucky enough to get a Road Home check have also reported a "bait and switch," but the state doesn't disclose how many grants are challenged at closings. The average award has been steadily dropping in the two months since the state first acknowledged the shortfall.

Even those who have found eventual success are weary of the Road Home. Take the case of Knecht, who proved more dogged than most in the pursuit of a reappraisal of his home's value.

An appraiser, one who also works for the Road Home, certified four months ago that Knecht's house is worth enough to get a grant, but the program never accepted the document, despite repeated reassurances from the Road Home staffers Knecht harangued for months. Then, just last week, came a breakthrough that would mean the difference between no Road Home grant and getting about $60,000 to replace the house's flimsy Tylex paper exterior with real siding.

Knecht, after months of frustration interactions with Road Home advisers, finally managed to get the ear of a top supervisor and told him he had shared his tale of woe with the newspaper. He suddenly got an e-mail Friday saying his appraisal would be accepted and that he could close on a grant within weeks. Though ecstatic, Knecht kept it in perspective.

"For the average person who doesn't get to talk to the top people, I don't know if they could ever get their money," he said.

The Incredible Machine

2007-07-16T02:57:00.000-07:00

I sat down with the head producer. He's wearing a knit vest depicting a landscape while he walks me through the features of Switchball, a promising XBLA title that crosses Marble Blast with The Incredible Machine.

I look again at that vest and wonder if he paints watercolors on the side.

We've seen the idea before: you're a ball that has to make it from one end of the map to another. But this iteration keeps it fresh with excellent physics. Things just "felt right," and I was really impressed when the ball rolled off a wooden platform onto a stretched blanket. The cloth gives the perfect amount—there is a ton of polish here. A well-built camera system seals the deal, trailing right behind the ball or rotating a wider image with ease.

Different ball types like a helium ball (that can be affected by wind) and a power ball (that glows dynamically while smashing through heavy objects in your way). Note: That's where we think they got the name Switchball.

Levels are Rube Goldberg inspired, with mousetrap type chutes and slides. But it's just a bit too high on the taste scale for us. We'd love to see everything zanified to the max within the conservative, oak wood framework.

I mean, it's not going to change the world or anything, but Switchball is just the sort of tight, pick up and play title that's good on the XBLA platform.

Campers build quirky gadgets to turn on lights

2007-07-16T02:53:00.000-07:00

Eight Carroll County children were asked the question: "What do you do when you hear a strange noise in your bedroom at night and think that there may be a monster in the corner?"

Their answer - build a contraption that turns on the light without having to get out of bed. So they did.

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They dubbed the massive, wacky, machine "The Illuminator" and constructed it using items such as a baseball, easels, pipes, cones, a remote-controlled car, wood scraps, plywood, mousetraps and a bowling ball.

"It's cool to make something so complex to do something so simple," said Andrew Brusca, 14, of Westminster. "This machine illustrates how difficult some people make the easiest things to do."

Andrew was one of eight middle school students who participated in the Summer!Kids@Carroll's Convoluted Contraptions camp, one of more than 100 enrichment programs at Carroll Community College. It is one of 42 new programs offered this year.

Children learn how machines move and operate and how to make crazy cartoons out of contraptions, said Ken Mihalyov, who created the camp.

The idea for the program is loosely based on a concept created by Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist and author Reuben Lucius Goldberg, known as Rube Goldberg, who created contraptions to poke fun at technology, Mihalyov said.

"Rube thought there were two ways to do things - simple and hard," said Mihalyov who teaches sixth grade at Westminster West Middle School. "And he thought that people always choose the hard way."

Mihalyov also created the program to test it to see if it worked as part of his science curriculum, he said.

"The kids learn a ton of different skills in this program," Mihalyov said. "They learn physics, engineering, and problem-solving skills. They also get to use tools they might not get to use at home, and they learn to be very creative."

Mihalyov started the program with a lesson about Goldberg, he said. Then the participants drew their own contraptions , said Mihalyov, who lives in Jacobus, Pa.

To create the machine, Mihalyov purchased materials at a dollar store.

"The kids had to use what I had a budget for," he said. "A lot of this stuff is just old junk I brought from home. When something didn't work, they had to adjust their plan."

The kids caught on quickly and within two days they had a machine that could turn on a light, he said.

"The entire project is their idea," he said. "I use the power tools, but they tell me what to do."

However, there wasn't anything simple about building the monstrosity, not even the planning process, said Timothy Brusca, 14, of Westminster.

"Building the machine required us to think about turning on a light in a different way," he said. "We had to think about how we could get the light switch to turn on, rather than how we turn it on."

To create the contraption, the children were divided into pairs and brainstormed ideas. Then they drew a rudimentary sketch of the contraption before starting construction.

Some of their ideas worked, and some of them were frustrating, said Andrew Brusca, 14, Timothy's brother.

For example, they wanted to create something to knock over scraps of wood that they had made to look like dominoes. First they used a rubber chicken that had an egg pop out, but that wasn't heavy enough to knock over the dominoes. So they tried something heavier to create the device - a baseball, a pot and a whoopee cushion, he said.

"We rigged the baseball to roll down a piece of gutter positioned above the pot," he said.

"When the baseball falls into the pot, it's supposed to put enough pressure on the whoopee cushion that it causes a breeze that knocks over the dominoes. That's ideal. But it didn't always work."

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Sometimes the ball would fall beside the pot, or under it, Shannon Barry said.

"The ball wouldn't fall at all, or it fell beside the pot," said Shannon, 12, of Eldersburg. "Finally we blew the whoopee cushion all the way up and positioned the ball just right. It was a lot of work, but we finally got it to work."

Once they completed the machine, it took 17 tries to get the contraption to work properly and turn on the light and then turn it off, Mihalyov said.

It was not easy. To turn on the light, the machine is triggered when the children pull and release a plunger that hits a car and sends it down a track. The car pulls a string tugging a rubber band from beneath the baseball, allowing it to roll down the gutter ramp and into the drain pipe.

The baseball stops and drops into a container squishing the whoopee cushion. Air from the whoopee cushion knocks over six wooden dominoes that trigger a mousetrap that activates the remote control car, causing it to drive forward until it crashes into a hammer.

The hammer swings into the baseball, sending it down the gutter into a ping-pong paddle. The paddle pulls down the string over the pulley raising the light switch to turn on the light.

When the machine is triggered, and everything works just right, the chain reaction to turn on the light fascinates Cameron Dull, 12, of Finksburg.

"This machine is really cool cause, like, everything happens at once," Cameron said. "You see the baseball go down into the pot, and the marble, and the bowling ball, but it all happens so fast it's hard to see more than that."

First rube goldberg.

2007-07-16T02:51:00.001-07:00

Really easy Rube Golberg machines

2007-07-16T02:49:00.000-07:00

This should be really easy. There are no dominoes required. Just a ball, a bent rail or hot wheels track and blue tape.

Rube Goldberg (Goal 1- Open a Book)

2007-07-02T06:29:00.000-07:00

Okayy, I decided to call all my contraptions from now on Rube Goldberg's.
This is my first Rube Goldberg machine that actually does a goal now. Oh yes, I also thought that the marble boards that bestpal and FunnyBoi69 used were cool, so I decided to create my own (lol I had to use a DVD player box as cardboard because I had no other pieces of cardboard that were big).

Goldburger To Go: A Better Mousetrap

2007-06-20T03:59:00.000-07:00

Add this to the list of kid-friendly Flash games out there. My daughter Tasha brought it to my attention –she thinks it’s pretty cool- and I’ve spent more than a few minutes playing around with it myself. This bit of software has helped to heal the wound I suffered when Tasha was finally old enough (ie., statistically unlikely to swallow and choke on a ball bearing) for me to justify buying Mousetrap to play with her; only to realize that either manufacturing standards have gone WAY down in the past thirty years, or my memory of the game was seriously messed up.

Mousing over a component of the machine gives kids a wrench that lets them make adjustments (tilt a mirror or alter the angle of a ramp, for example) and they can then drop the gumball to see how far it goes and how their modifications affect the results. The path the ball travels varies depending on how the inputs are changed. All the favorite mechanisms (and more) are there: a bowling ball, dominoes, water, funnels, a skateboard, a fishing rod, ramps, rubber duck, and -of course- a mousetrap. There are tips and clues available for those times when the gumball stalls.

As an added bonus, the PBS Kids ZOOM site that hosts the Goldburger To Go game, includes not only a blurb about Rube Goldberg and his designs, but a list of more than thirty contraptions kids and their parents can build together. I think we might give the cotton ball catapult a try- apparently someone has managed to launch a cotton ball 28 feet. That sounds like a challenge.

Play here

Office Rube Goldberg

2007-06-12T05:28:00.000-07:00

How to Rube Goldberg Machines :)

2007-06-07T08:34:00.000-07:00

We used "one thing" twice! Thats why its our best Rube Goldberg ever!!

Pyro Sand Game Rube Goldberg (video)

2007-06-07T08:26:00.000-07:00

Awesome Rube Goldberg video

2007-06-07T07:57:00.000-07:00

Rube Goldberg machine with cure for cancer

2007-06-07T07:55:00.000-07:00

Half-Life 2 Gmod Rube goldberg machine

2007-06-07T07:54:00.000-07:00

Rube Goldberg

2007-06-07T07:49:00.000-07:00

Rube Goldberg sketch from the collection of Ropes & Gray

Rube Goldberg Billiards!

2007-05-22T00:41:00.000-07:00

Awesome! Must see!! It's a type of Rube Goldberg contraption but like billiard dominos! It's so good!!

Rube Goldberg Dog Food Dispencer

2007-05-22T00:38:00.000-07:00

This is a Rube Goldberg Dog Food Dispencer that me and my friend made for a science project.

Rube Goldberg and his perpetual motion machine.

2007-05-22T00:36:00.000-07:00

Rube Goldberg - Something for Nothing 1940

Incredible... The oil industry conspiracy was already running at full steam in 1940... 67 years ago... now it's a 5 trillions dollars a year business with very hungry and voracious holders. Humm.... :(

Family Guy - Peter's Breakfast Rube Goldberg Machine

2007-05-22T00:33:00.000-07:00

Family Guy - Peter's Breakfast Machine

Pyromaniac's Delight Rube Goldberg Machine

2007-05-22T00:29:00.000-07:00

Kids, don’t try this at home! Click on the image or go to College Humor. -via Gorilla Mask.

"God damn it, it's on fire."
"Wait! Just let it happen..."

Rube Goldberg Machine 3

2007-05-18T03:44:00.000-07:00

Rube Goldberg Machine 2

2007-05-18T03:43:00.000-07:00

Rube Goldberg Machine 1

2007-05-18T03:39:00.000-07:00

Sticks And Stones Rube Goldberg Contraption

2007-05-18T03:32:00.000-07:00

Using sticks and stones, this Rube Goldberg contraption is amazing!

Rube Goldberg’s Instruction Manual

2007-05-18T03:27:00.000-07:00

Rube Goldberg’s Instruction Manual

Since string theory first became popular in 1984-5, attempts to connect it to particle physics have suffered from various problems. One of the most severe of these goes under the name of “moduli stabilization”. Six dimensional Calabi-Yau manifolds come in families, parametrized by “moduli”. The dimensions of these moduli spaces can be of order 100 or so.

Naively it might appear that string theories are characterized by a choice of a topological class of Calabi-Yaus (no one knows if the number of these is finite or infinite), and then a choice of each of the 100 or so parameters that fix the size and shape of the Calabi-Yau. According to the standard string theory ideology, this is not the right way to think, instead there is really only one string theory, with different moduli values corresponding to different states. The moduli parameters are supposed to be dynamical elements of the theory, not something parametrizing different theories.

The problem with this is that if you promote the moduli to dynamical fields, they naively correspond to massless fields, and thus give new long-range forces. So you have to explain away why we don’t see 100 or so different kinds of long-range forces, and the experimental bounds on such forces are very good. Some kind of dynamics must be found that will “stabilize moduli”, giving them a non-trivial potential. The moduli fields will then be fluctuations about the minima of this potential. If the quadratic piece of the potential is large enough, their mass will be high enough to have escaped observation.

One needs a potential with non-trivial minima, and has to ensure that the dynamics is not such that the moduli will run off to infinity. In recent years, ways of achieving this have been found that typically involve “flux compactifications”, i.e. choosing non-trivial fluxes through the topologically non-trivial holes in the Calabi-Yau. On the one hand, this seems to provide a long-standing solution to the problem of how to stabilize the Calabi-Yau, on the other hand, it appears that there is an exponentially large number of possible minima. This is the origin of the “Landscape” and the associated claims of 10500 or more possible vacuum states for string theory.

The constructions involved are famously exceedingly complex and ugly, with Susskind referring to them as “Rube Goldberg machines”, and one of their creators, Shamit Kachru, the “Rube Goldberg architect”. Very recently a new Reviews of Modern Physics article by Kachru and Douglas called Flux Compactification has appeared. It can be thought of as a manual describing how to construct and count these Rube Goldberg machines.

Many string theorists had long hoped that whatever method was found to stabilize moduli would have only a small number of solutions. Then, in principle one would get only a small number of possible models of particle physics for each topological class of Calabi-Yaus. If the number of these was finite and not too large (the known number of constructions is something like 105-106), then to see if string theory could make contact with particle physics, one would just have to do a moderately large number of calculations, check them against the real world, and hope that one matched. If it did, it would then be highly predictive.

The existence of the flux compactifications with stabilized moduli described in the Douglas-Kachru article has convinced many string theorists that this old dream is dead. Some have tried to claim that this is a good thing, that the exponentially large number of states allows the existence of ones with anomalously small cosmological constants, and thus an anthropic explanation of its value. The problem then becomes one of how to ever extract any prediction of anything from string theory. Small CCs are achieved by very delicate cancellations, and it appears to be a thoroughly calculationally intractable problem to even identify a single state with small enough CC.

Many string theorists are now claiming that this is not really a big deal. So what if there are lots and lots of string theory vacua, it’s just like the fact that there are lots and lots of 4d QFTs! For arguments of this kind, see recent comment threads here and here. There’s something fishy about this argument, since discussion of flux compactifications has from the beginning focused on whether it is possible to use them to make predictions, whereas no one ever was worrying about whether (renormalizable) QFTs were predictive or not.

The source of the problem lies in the combination of the large numbers of string theory vacua with their Rube Goldberg nature. Consistent 4d QFTs are characterized by a limited set of data (gauge groups, fermion and scalar representations, coupling constants), and it has turned out that among the simplest possible choices of such data lies the Standard Model. String theorists commonly describe the Standard Model as “ugly”, but it is among the simplest possible 4d QFTs, and is extremely simple and beautiful compared to something like the flux compactification constructions. One could hope that while flux compactifications are inherently rather complicated, one of the simpler ones might correspond to the real world. As far as I know there’s no evidence at all for this, such a hope appears to have nothing behind it besides pure wishful thinking. Some string theorists like Douglas and Kachru don’t seem to think this is possible, focussing instead on statistical counts of more and more complicated flux compactifications, hoping to find not a simple one that will work, but a statistical enhancement of certain complicated ones that would pick them out.

4d QFT is a predictive framework not because the number of possible such QFTs is small, but because our universe is described extremely accurately by one of a small number of the simplest of such QFTs. A few experiments are sufficient to pick out the right QFT, and then an infinity of predictions follow.

Is the QFT framework falsifiable? One could imagine that things had worked out differently, that instead of the Standard Model predictions being confirmed, each time a new experimental result came in, one could only get agreement with experiment by adding new fields and interactions to the model. It might very well be that the QFT framework could not be falsified, since one could always evade falsification by adding complexity. This happens very often with wrong ideas: they start with a simple model, experimental results disagree with this, but can be matched by making the model more complicated. As new experiments are done, if the original idea is wrong, it doesn’t get simply falsified, but the increasing complexity of the models needed to match experiment sooner or later causes people to give up on the whole idea.

This is very much what has happened with string theory. The simple models that got people excited about the idea of string theory unification don’t agree with experiment, with the moduli stabilization problem just one example. It appears one can solve the problem, but it’s a Pyrrhic victory: one is forced into working with a class of models so vast and so complicated that one can get almost anything, and never can extract any real predictions.

Douglas and Kachru do address the question of whether one can ever hope to get predictions out of this class of models, but their answer is that they can’t think of any plausible way of doing so. They mention various things that people have tried, but none of these ideas seem to work. The best hope was that counting vacua with different supersymmetry breaking scales would lead to a statistical prediction of this scale, but this has not worked out for reasons that they describe. In the end they conclude:

For the near term, the main goal here is not really prediction, but rather to broaden the range of theories under discussion, as we will need to keep an open mind in confronting the data.

This acknowledges that no predictions from this framework seem to be possible, and that continuing work in this area just keeps producing yet wider and wider classes of these Rube Goldberg machines. They are suggesting basically giving up not on string theory, which would be the usual scientific conclusion in this circumstance, but instead to for now give up on the theorist’s traditional goal of making testable predictions. They advocate not giving up on string theory no matter how bad things look, instead just continuing as before, hoping against hope that an experimental miracle will occur. Maybe astronomers will find evidence for cosmic superstrings, maybe the LHC will see strings or something that matches up with characteristics of one of the Rube Goldberg models. There’s not the slightest reason to believe this will happen other than wishful thinking, which has now been promoted to a new program for how to do fundamental science.

Update: Via Lubos, for those who don’t know what a Rube Goldberg machine is, two examples are here and here.

Rube Goldberg Machines - tea bag into a cup

2007-05-18T03:00:00.000-07:00

My friends made a machine that puts a tea bag into a cup... physics, kinematics, mechanics, energy, interesting, amazing, machine, marble, run, contraption, device

The Star Wars Rube Golberg project from White Bear Lake High school physics with Cava, class of 2006.

2007-05-18T02:59:00.000-07:00

The Star Wars Rube Golberg project from White Bear Lake High school physics with Cava, class of 2006. sure its cheesy, but it was fun.

Spring 2006 Open House - Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology

2007-05-18T02:52:00.000-07:00

Machine to pick a winner for a prize!

1. Turn the hand-powered "generator"

2. Motor lifts dog house

3. Gear dog walks out of house

4. Triggers mousetrap

5. String on mousetrap spins gears

6. Paperclip from gears releases bag of balls

7. Bag pushes on lever

8. Lever releases pink ball

9. Pink ball triggers mousetrap

10. Mousetrap pulls nail from yellow stick, dropping a weight

11. String on weight pulls lever up

12. Lever releases golf ball

13. Golf ball bumps ball down staircase

14. Ball bumps tinkertoy sticks

15. Magnetic ball rolls slowly through copper pipe

16. Lands in basket and pushes down lever

17. Another lever sets off mousetrap

18. Mousetrap triggers Gauss Rifle (magnetic propulsion)

19. Magnets travel uphill, releasing last one through yellow tube.

20. Hits a set of marbles, that roll down the "pinball machine"

21. Marbles knock over blue lego piece

22. Lego triggers mousetrap number four

23. Mousetrap pulls plug from bottle, releasing sand

24. Weight of sand (eventually) turns on switch

25. Switch powers motor that spins bingo cage. This releases a ball to pick the winner!

Rube Goldberg Officeplace Contraption

2007-05-18T02:49:00.000-07:00

A friend and I decided to spend a night at my workplace assembling a contraption using supplies from the supply room and my basement. We started at 11p.m. on 6/26/05, and finished around 5:30a.m. This is take eight. Six of the eight worked.

Rube Goldberg type machine to fix ramen for dinner

2007-05-18T02:46:00.000-07:00

Amazing Rube Goldberg type machine to fix ramen for dinner

How to build a Rube Goldberg Machine?

2007-05-18T02:42:00.000-07:00

How to build a Rube Goldberg Machine

Welcome to the wacky world of Rube Goldberg. The Rube Goldberg Machine Contest (RGMC) has come a long way from its humble beginnings as an inter-fraternity contest. By participating, you help promote the value of education to young people everywhere. The series of contests which make up the whole of the RGMC are specially designed for this purpose. Of course, the most important goal has always been to challenge students to take a few steps back from reality, gain a new perspective on how things work, and have fun making the most complicated, roundabout device to complete a simple task. This is the essence of the RGMC.

As with any ambitious venture, there are two aspects to the contest. Someone must run each contest and someone must compete. This guide will explore each side. We will address a number of questions, including: What is the contest? Why does it go on? How does one arrange a contest, get contestants, find a space to compete, and get the money to do all this? What is a Rube Goldberg Machine? What does it look like? How much time will I have to invest? How do these people come up with these off-the-wall ideas?

We will begin with the most basic component of the contest.

The Rube Goldberg machines you build are different from the machines people are used to seeing. A good Rube Goldberg machine incorporates the everyday machines people are used to seeing and connects them in ways that may seem idiotic or ingenious. It is your mission to construct a machine that uses at least 20 individual steps to complete an assigned task, which varies from year to year.

Your machine may take some time to put together. Many machines undergo months of strategy and planning; other are put together in a few days.

Over the years, the machines that have done best seem to be those that arrive at the contest site in sections, as opposed to pieces. The less work that has to be done to assemble your machine at the site, the better. Too often, things that work perfectly in the workshop break down during the trip to the contest site. Most machines arrive in two or three pieces. A platform should be constructed for the machine with a simple and secure way to fasten it together; typical platforms are made of plywood and two-by-fours. Steps that bridge machine sections should be easy to connect. The rest of the machine is up to you.

Each team plans its machine in its own way. Some teams try to plan their whole machine before starting to build it; others just dive in head first. Maybe the best way is to use a little of both approaches. In the end, you will need a detailed description of the machine for the contest judges, and as you'll see, much of your early plans for the machine will have changed by the time you finish building it.

The materials you use are the most important components of the machine. See what you have around the house, raid your old toy chest, pick up all those appliances Dad has been meaning to fix, but most importantly, USE THEM. Anything goes when you are building a Rube Goldberg machine. Rube knew no bounds when he created his machines, and you should take the same attitude. Follow the adage ''Nothing is impossible, if you try." Your imagination is your only limit.

Услуги Генподрядчика Киев от строительной компании ВестБудИнвест

Japanese Rube Goldberg Machines

2007-05-18T02:37:00.000-07:00

А Japanese version of Rube Goldberg Machines

Rube Goldberg machine or device is any exceedingly complex apparatus that performs a very simple task in a very indirect and convoluted way. It first appeared in Webster's Third New International Dictionary with the definition, "accomplishing by extremely complex roundabout means what actually or seemingly could be done simply." The expression has been dated as originating in the US around 1930 to describe Goldberg's illustrations of "absurdly-connected machines". Since then, the expression's meaning has expanded to denote any form of overly confusing or complicated system. For example, recent news headlines include "Is Rep. Bill Thomas the Rube Goldberg of Legislative Reform?",and "Retirement 'insurance' as a Rube Goldberg machine".

About Reuben Garret L. Goldberg

2007-03-20T03:15:00.000-07:00

Reuben Garret L. Goldberg (July 4, 1883 - December 7, 1970) was a cofounder and president of the American National Cartoonists Society. He is one of the most famous cartoonists in history, who earned lasting fame for his Rube Goldberg machines (exceedingly complex devices that perform simple tasks in very indirect and convoluted ways). He was posthumously awarded the National Cartoonist Society Gold Key Award in 1980.

Early life

Goldberg graduated from Lowell High School in 1900 and earned a degree in engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 1904. Out of college, Goldberg was hired by the city of San Francisco as an engineer. However, his fondness for drawing cartoons prevailed, and after just a few months he left the city to employ for a job with the San Francisco Chronicle as a sports cartoonist. The following year he took a job with the San Francisco Bulletin, where he remained until relocated to New York City in 1907.

He drew cartoons for several newspapers, including the New York Evening Journal and the New York Evening Mail. His work entered syndication in 1915, beginning his nationwide popularity. A prolific artist, Goldberg produced several cartoon series simultaneously; titles included Mike and Ike, Boob McNutt, Foolish Questions, Lala Palooza, and The Weekly Meeting of the Tuesday Women's Club.

While these series were quite popular, the one leading to his lasting fame involved a character named Professor Lucifer Gorgonzola Butts. In this series, Goldberg would draw labeled schematics of comical "inventions" which would later bear his name. In 1995, "Rube Goldberg's Inventions", depicting Professor Butts' Self-Operating Napkin, was one of 20 strips included in the Comic Strip Classics series of commemorative U.S. postage stamps.

He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his political cartooning in 1942.

Late Life

Later in his career, Goldberg was employed by the New York Journal American, and remained there until his retirement in 1964. During his retirement, he occupied himself by making bronze sculptures. Several one-man shows of his work were organized, the last one of his lifetime being in 1970 at the National Museum of American History (then called the Museum of History and Technology) in Washington, D.C.. Shortly after, he died at the age of 87; he is buried at Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York.

Awards

In addition to his Pulitzer Prize in 1948, he received the National Cartoonist Society Gold T-Square Award in 1955, their Reuben Award for 1969, and was given their Gold Key Award (their Hall of Fame) posthumously in 1980.

Уборка дворов в Чернигове. Произведена уборка территории от мусора, его сбор, сортировка и складирование