7 Unbelievable Rube Goldberg Machines We Love

They're incredible, complex, excessive, elaborate, and undeniably over-the-top. Who doesn't love a Rube Goldberg machine?

By laura kiniry

Nov 13, 2013

Media Platforms Design Team

They're incredible, complex, excessive, elaborate, and undeniably over-the-top. Who doesn't love a Rube Goldberg machine?

Life-Size Mouse Trap

Artist and self-described "fungineer" Mark Perez has turned the classic Rube Goldberg–style board game Mousetrap into a larger-than-life traveling show. All of the game's original parts are here: an old bathtub, a diving board, and a two-ton safe as well as a car for smashing. The 16-piece contraption took Perez 13 years to pull together and requires two days of assembly at each new location. It weighs 50,000 pounds Look for it at the Maker Faire in San Mateo, Calif., each May, and others like it nationwide.

OK Go, "This Too Shall Pass"

A creative collective of engineers, architects, roboticists, and NASA research scientists known as Syyn Labs are the minds behind OK Go's famed 2010 "This Too Shall Pass" video, which features an intricate Rube Goldberg contraption synchronized seamlessly with the song's beats and lyrics. According to Syyn Labs' president, Adam Sadowsky, the entire setup featured more working parts than a car engine, including a soccer ball that triggered a falling piano and a rolling tire that turned on a fan, which then blew an umbrella ... (you get the idea). While the 4-minute video was shot in single takes over two floors in an L.A. warehouse, and the contraption ran all the way through three times, there's one slight edit around the 2:20 mark for the sake of consistency. The entire video took about 60 takes to make. It has more than 40 million views on YouTube.

MythBusters Holiday Rube Goldberg

In December 2006, MythBusters Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman decided to surprise their viewers with this curious contraption. Using the famously combustible combination of Coke and Mentos, they set off a chain reaction of events that included more than 35 working parts including bowling pins, a model train, and a nutcracker—with the end goal of knocking MythBusters' crash-test dummy Buster to the floor.

Tuna Melt Rube

Another Rube Goldberg machine designed for a music video, this one is set to A-Trak and Tommy Trash's catchy electro tune "Tuna Melt." The contraption is made up of thousands of small, working parts, including a row of falling toast and flying paper airplanes, spread throughout every room and across most surfaces (on the floor, across the sofa, up a set of chairs) in A-Trak's stunning St. Paul home. The end result? A perfect tuna melt.

Purdue's Balloon Pop

In 2012, a team of engineers from Purdue University took second place (as well as a People's Choice Award) in their school's 25th annual Rube Goldberg Machine Contest. Their entry: a record-setting 300-step contraption that did everything from change a lightbulb to sharpen a pencil, all in the service of popping a balloon. The machine took more than 5000 hours to plan and piece together and is most unusual for its innovative and compact platform: a couple of rotating paddlewheels that rotate to reveal a new series of steps as others are completed. Guinness has named it the "World's Largest Rube Goldberg Machine," beating out the previous record holder, another Purdue monstrosity from 2011 that used 244 steps to destroy, then rebuild, the planet.

"Cog" Honda Commercial

Debuted on British television in April 2003, this two-minute Honda Accord commercial is one of the most elaborate ads out there: car parts working together as part of an intricate Rube Goldberg machine (no computer graphics used) with the end purpose of selling a vehicle. Filming—which was split into two parts to accommodate the whole sequence—took four round-the-clock days and involved hundreds of takes, as well as an entirely disassembled, handmade Accord. It also cost $6 million to make, though Honda execs estimate the commercial has paid for itself in free viewings (it has more than 5 million views on YouTube alone).

Isaac Newton vs Rube Goldberg

The sleek, streamlined design of the Issac Newton vs Rube Goldberg machine by 2D House is already a beauty to watch, but wait until you realize the first half the contraption is actually constructed upside down. 2D's secret? Lots of magnets. Be prepared, this video can definitely mess with your mind.

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