标签: rube goldberg

1927. It was an interesting year as all kinds of things were happening. For example, work started on the Mount Rushmore National Memorial in South Dakota, Charles Lindbergh made the first solo transatlantic non-stop flight from New York City to Paris, and Leon Trotsky was expelled from the Communist Party allowing Josef Stalin to take control (that was not a good day, generally speaking). Oh yes ... one other thing ... the world's longest-continuously-running scientific experiment was kicked off, which means this little rascal has now been running for 85 years. Thomas Parnell (1881 – 1948) was the first Professor of Physics at the University of Queensland. Professor Parnell wanted to demonstrate to students that some substances that appear to be solid are in fact very-high-viscosity fluids. In order to do this, he took some tar pitch – a type of tar that is so brittle you can shatter it with a hammer – heated it up, poured it into a funnel, and let it cool and solidify ... for three years! After that time he broke the seal at the bottom of the funnel and waited for the tar pitch to start dripping out. And drip it did, although (thus far) no one has actually observed a drop fall. The first drip occurred in 1938 – eight years after the bottom of the funnel was opened. This was followed by drips in 1947, 1954, 1962, 1970, 1979, 1988, and 2000.   Based on these results, experimenters now calculate that the pitch has a viscosity approximately 230 billion (2.3×10 11 ) times that of water. Furthermore, based on the current drip rate, it is anticipated that the experiment will continue for another 100 years or so before all of the pitch has exited the funnel. You can watch this ongoing experiment on webcam by clicking here (the next drip could happen anytime). And speaking of long-running "happenings", have you heard about the renowned kinetic sculptor Arthur Ganson who creates mechanical art demonstrations and Rube Goldberg machines with existential themes? Some of Ganson's extremely elaborate creations have only one very simple function, such as oiling themselves or causing a chair to bounce around a toy cat, while others do nothing at all, but in a visually fascinating manner. The one that really grabbed me when I saw it is the Machine with Concrete as illustrated below.   This little beauty runs uninterrupted even though the final gear is embedded in concrete, and the gear reductions mean the final gear will make one revolution in roughly 2.3 trillion years.  

I was just revisiting two of my favourite Heath Robinson / Rube Goldberg videos – the famous Honda Accord ("Cog") advert and the *This Too Shall Pass* video by the rock band OK Go.   If you haven't already seen these videos, be prepared to spend a few minutes going "Oooh" and "Aaah" and then watching them a second time and then emailing the URL for this blog to your friends, because they truly are amazing...   Now, just to remind ourselves, British cartoonist and illustrator William Heath Robinson (1872-1944) and his American counterpart Reuben (Rube) Lucius Goldberg (1883-1970) were both famous for creating illustrations of machines that were intended to perform relatively simple tasks, but whose implementations were incredibly complex such that they performed their tasks in exceedingly convoluted and indirect ways.   The two videos of which I speak are like concentrated and distilled versions of Heath Robinson / Rube Goldberg concepts. I only wish Heath and Rube could see these videos, because I'm sure that that they would have had a good chuckle over them.   The first video is a Honda Accord advert known as the Cog Advert . A lot of folks thought that this was CGI (Computer Generated Imagery), but this really is real-world physical components. The amazing thing is that it is (or at least it appears to be) a single continuous shot – goodness only knows how long it took to get this all to work so perfectly.   A couple of things to note are (a) when the wheels roll UP the ramp this is because they were weighted on their leading edge, (b) when the fan pulls itself along the floor observe how it's motion is perfectly timed to only just touch its target, and (c) the windshield wiper sequence which just looks so ... weird (almost like a sequence from the end of the first Terminator film).   The second film is a video by OK Go, a rock band originally from Chicago, Illinois, USA, now residing in Los Angeles, California, USA. Unlike the Honda advert, I believe this video did have a number of cuts, but that doesn't make it any the less impressive (well, I suppose it does, but it's still an amazing video).   Quite apart from anything else, I really like the accompanying music – which is a bit silly of me to say, because the entire video is actually the complement to the track as opposed to being the other way round.   There are so many cool things about this video – but I particularly like the end where we finally discover how/why the band members are covered in paint.   All in all I think these videos are amazing. I would have loved to have been involved in their creation, and I can watch them time and time again...  

Cog Advert . A lot of folks thought that this was CGI (Computer Generated Imagery), but this really is real-world physical components. The amazing thing is that it is (or at least it appears to be) a single continuous shot – goodness only knows how long it took to get this all to work so perfectly.   A couple of things to note are (a) when the wheels roll UP the ramp this is because they were weighted on their leading edge, (b) when the fan pulls itself along the floor observe how it's motion is perfectly timed to only just touch its target, and (c) the windshield wiper sequence which just looks so ... weird (almost like a sequence from the end of the first Terminator film).   The second film is a video by OK Go, a rock band originally from Chicago, Illinois, USA, now residing in Los Angeles, California, USA. Unlike the Honda advert, I believe this video did have a number of cuts, but that doesn't make it any the less impressive (well, I suppose it does, but it's still an amazing video).   Quite apart from anything else, I really like the accompanying music – which is a bit silly of me to say, because the entire video is actually the complement to the track as opposed to being the other way round.   There are so many cool things about this video – but I particularly like the end where we finally discover how/why the band members are covered in paint.   All in all I think these videos are amazing. I would have loved to have been involved in their creation, and I can watch them time and time again...