Rube Goldberg Machine
The plight of the orb people. There exists a population entirely composed of marbles, both magnetic and glass. Among these marbles are both forces of good and evil, notably the villainous Dr. War Crimes and the noble Task Force of Awesome (TFA) and three of its most prestigious agents. Agent Melted Sand, Agent Steel, and Agent Ferrous. The notorious Dr. War Crimes has trapped the Secretary of State, Mar-Bell, in chamber of toxic gas. The three agents must free Mar-Bell before he dies of Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. Their first attempt failed, and now both Agents Ferrous and Steel have been captured. If Ferrous could just roll down the ramp of imprisonment, she could free Steel, who in turn could potentially free the secretary. It is all down to Agent Melted Sand to save everybody.
Due to Doctor War Crime’s Impeccable security, there is only one entrance to his Secret Lair. In order to free Agent Ferrous, Agent melted sand must bounce off the blue platform and topple the knowledge columns onto the conveniently placed level arm.
Agent Melted Sand thinks in order to knock down the Columns, he will need to be at at least 2.5 m/s at the end of the pipe in order to properly bounce off of the blue platform. Luckily, he graduated from Ball-ermane College Prep and took Ms. Roll-mers Physics C class. He knows that there will be conservation of energy, with both translational and rotational movement.
Melted Sand, Satisfied with the calculation, leaps into the pipe
Despite losing some speed to friction and air resistance, Agent Melted Sand is able to topple the Columns and free Agent Ferrous.
Now Agent Ferrous, freed from the lever arm, must roll down the Ramp of imprisonment. Though she was not from Ball-ermane College Prep, she graduated top of her class at UC Ball-kley. She similarly understood the conservation of energy that involved both rotational and translational movement, so she made calculations of her own.
Satisfied with her speed, she began rolling. Dr. War Crimes became increasingly concerned, so he recorded Agent Ferrus’s motion to she if she could accurately calculate a change in energy at that speed
The bewildered Dr. War Crimes calmed down for a second when he realized that there was no way Agent Ferrous could have calculated the energy of the mousetrap, since he held the only copy of the research necessary. But Alas!, the TFA had been developing their own research on the energy of spring constants, utilizing their knowledge of calculus and logger pro to circumnavigate years of manual computation.
Agent Ferrous knew she could free Agent Steel, since the mousetrap was so powerful that most of its energy was actually lost to friction and heat.
with a triumphant *Snap!*, the mousetrap was triggered and Agent steel was freed. And just in time! The secretary was beginning to suffer pain from his Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis
The time had come for Steel to perform his duty. Unfortunately, the only way to destroy the Senator’s container was by jumping into Dr. War Crimes’ Ultimate weapon of doom, Which luckily functioned exactly like a ballistic pendulum. This process would kill him, as he would have to meld with this device in a perfectly inelastic collision to transfer his momentum in the most efficient way possible.
Was Steel’s Noble Sacrifice Worth it? Was the Secretary Saved?
Rube Goldberg But With Epic Music — YouTube
Or was it part of Dr. War Crimes’ Plan all along?
An excerpt from Doctor War Crimes -> Design Process
I want to preface by saying everything went exactly according to plan. The foolhardy TFA sacrificed their best warrior to save a measly politician. Ill make that trade any day of the week! The real difficulty came in refining to plan. When i was testing my facilities with other captured agents, I notice a lot of inconsistencies, the most damming of which was the system activated by the mousetrap. You see, in my new brilliant design, the mousetrap pulls a thread in order to trigger the release of Agent Steel, but that was not always the case. In previous iterations, I had a system where the mousetrap compressed a lever arm, then the lever arm broke a one wide, 27 tall Jenga tower stacked vertically. It actually functioned exactly as designed, but the main problem was the time between tests. It took around 4 minutes to properly prime, and over hundreds of practice runs that adds up fast. I eventually changed the system because I was 16 hours into the second day of trying to perfect the machine, so i created something easier to reset. Another difficulty came from the actual block used for the retention of Agent Steel. I originally used a normal Jenga block, with steel just balancing on the tip. However this was far to inconsistent, and required so much force to keep level that the mechanism frequently fired standing still. I the hand machined a piece of wood with a deep indentation for steel, so he should stay attached even when the block was dangling at a 30 degree angle.
A similar issue came from the design of the lever arm system used to free agent Ferrous. I originally just tried to balance the tube over something simple, but I soon discovered that i would need to create an additional mechanism specifically for this purpose. I then took a solid wood block, but it in 3 with a miter saw, created a sort of tripod, and removed the corner of each wood piece so it would stand level on the ground. this, in conjunction with some supporting blocks, allowed the arguably strangest part of the contraption to be the most consistent, always firing even when other mechanisms failed.
The blue Platform Agent Melted Sand bounce off of was also frequently inconsistently. After every test, it would be in a slightly different location, meaning that the ball never hit the same place trial to trial. I resolved this by wrapping the coaster around a rubics cube and backed it up with a bookstop, so it always maintained its angle even after collision.
Another substantial issue was resolved quite simply. At the base of the track leading into the ballistic pendulum, the ball frequently bounced and missed the catch of the pendulum entirely. I soon realized this is because agent steel was landing directly on the portion of track that was supported by a solid piece of wood, creating the perfect conditions for a collision. To fix this, i replaced the support with a rigid foam that still held the track in place but deformed slightly to eliminate the problem of bouncing.
Speaking of Bouncing, another issue arose from actually keeping the balloon in place. I was originally going to create a different system that didn’t involve the secretary at all, but the ballistic pendulum kept knowing the balloon away before popping it. By using the secretary, I was able to put a weight in the balloon to keep it still, enabling my plan to come to fruition.
More info and visuals
Rube Goldberg Machine Physics C — YouTube
