Commentary On Society's Use Of Rube Goldberg Machines

Purpose

The machine is a Rube Goldberg machine that turns on a light. It has no practical purpose, and exists solely as art. It is exciting and beautiful to watch, but a machine that takes three times as long to do a task that requires very little effort without a machine has no inherent value. It is simply there as art, as something for people to look at and to enjoy.

A Rube Goldberg machine is witty. People like seeing how parts just fit together, how a chain reaction of small parts can do something none of them, except perhaps the last, could do alone. It is fun to watch something just work, and that is part of the charm of a Rube Goldberg.

The machine is also commentary on society’s use of machines. In its unnecessary complexity, a Rube Goldberg machine shows the obsession we have with more and more complicated machines with little regard as to whether or not they are useful. It says that machines aren’t always necessary, that machines can sometimes even get in the way.

Finally, sometimes science must be done simply as science without any knowledge of why it’s important. Sometimes questions that have very little impact on

anyone’s life must be investigated, simply for knowledge. It can be very interesting to learn and discover things that mean very little to the world.
While it has no practical value, the machine is important in that it functions as art and it comments on society. It exists for the sake of art and science and nothing else.

B. Background Research
Rube Goldberg (1883-1970) was an American cartoonist most famous for his “Inventions.” He was born in San Francisco, California. When he was eleven, he started taking art lessons. He went to the School of Mining Engineering at The University of California in Berkeley and frequently submitted cartoons to The Pelican, the student humor magazine; he graduated in 1904. After deciding mining was not for him, Rube had a few jobs, first working for the city, and then as a sports cartoonist, ending up at the San Francisco News-Call Bulletin.
In 1907, Rube Goldberg decided to move to New York City, and was hired as a junior sports artist-cartoonist for the New York Evening Mail. In 1909, he began the series Foolish Questions, which gained him national name recognition; by 1911, he had drawn almost four hundred of these cartoons and had a Foolish Questions card game. From 1915 to 1916, Rube began creating ten-minute silent animated cartoons, which meant he was working fifteen- to twenty-hour days, so he quit animation.
The first of “The Inventions” was published in 1914, and quickly gained readers. He made an average of one a week for fifty years. In his life, he created over sixty different cartoon series in his life.
In 1938, Rube announced he was giving up comics and would only write from there on. He also made advertisements and let his work be reprinted. However, his friend, who was the general manager of the New York Sun, convinced him to do three editorial-page drawings a week.
In 1948, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartoons for his “Peace Today” cartoon. In 1950, he moved from the New York Sun to the New York Journal. His last cartoon was published in 1964, when he decided to become a sculptor. In 1967, Rube Goldberg was awarded the Reuben Award, which was both named after him and designed by him, and is the highest award given to a cartoonist by the National Cartoonist Society. In 1970, the National Museum of History and Technology of the Smithsonian Institution honored Rube with a retrospective of his work called “Do It the Hard Way.” Rube Goldberg died two weeks later on December 7, 1970.
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, Rube Goldberg means “accomplishing by complex means what seemingly could be done simply.” There is a famous Rube Goldberg machine competition held each year at Purdue University; this competition defines a successful Rube Goldberg machine as one that “...completes its tasks without any (highly desired) or with minimal human intervention, [whose] steps are clearly visible...

has more antigravity power steps (highly desired) or has a minimal number of gravity power steps, is not entirely powered by electrical motors or uses minimal electrical power to move objects…” The Engineering Department at Robert Morris University has stated that a Rube Goldberg machine should have at least 15 steps, have items easily found (not purchased), and have minimal human intervention, except to start the

machine.
A Rube Goldberg machine is made up in large part of simple machines. The simple machines are levers, the wheel and axle, inclined planes, wedges, screws, and pulleys.
A lever is a bar that moves around a fulcrum. The input arm of a lever is the distance between the input arm and the fulcrum, while the output arm is the distance between the output arm and the fulcrum. A first class lever has the fulcrum located between the input force and the output force, a second-class lever has the output force located between the input force and the fulcrum, like in a wheelbarrow or a door, and a third class lever has the input force located between the output force and the fulcrum, like in a baseball bat.
The wheel and axle has two concentric disks or cylinders with different radiuses; the outer one is the wheel, and the inner one is the axle. An example of a wheel and axle is a wheel on a bike or a steering wheel.
An inclined plane is a slanted surface that a force moves along to change the elevation of an object. By changing the input distance, it lowers the input force. A wedge is made up of two inclined planes that slope towards each other, and a screw is and inclined plane wrapped around a cylinder.
A pulley consists of a rope in the groove of a wheel. A fixed pulley has a wheel in a fixed location, while the rope moves up or down. A movable pulley has a fixed rope, and the wheel moves with the object being moved. A pulley system is a combination of both fixed and movable pulleys.

C. Hypothesis
The machine have 16 steps. When tested the machine should function like this: the user pulls on one end of a fixed pulley (1) which brings up a wooden block (2) which stops blocking a toy car, that rolls down a ramp and hits a ball (3) which rolls on a track and hits a first-class lever (4), which pivots and hits a roll of tape (5), which rolls down a ramp (6) and becomes the effort force of a third-class lever (7), which hits a cup and tips it over (8), out of which falls a marble that hits a domino (9), which starts a chain-reaction of dominoes (10), and the last one hits a ball off the table on which all this happened (11); the ball was attached to a playing card by a string, and the playing card is pulled of the track in which it was wedged (12), and it stops blocking a car, which rolls down the track (13), and hits a rolling pin (14) which rolls down a ramp (15) and hits a hook off a broom (16), which makes a lever go down and hit the button of the lamp (17), causing it to turn on.

D. Procedure
The machine was created, with the exception of the pulley, with items found around the house. The hypothesis detailed quite carefully how the machine should work, so the machine was built exactly according to plan.
At first, there was a problem with the cup falling consistently; it always fell somewhere different. This was solved by building walls around the cup so it could only fall in one place. These walls extended to make a track for the marble.
The materials used were a music stand (step 1), a pulley (store-bought, step 1), a table (steps 2-10), books (steps 2, 3, 4, and 14), tracks for toy cars (steps 3, 4, 12), tape (steps 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 13, 15, 16, 17), two balls (3, 9), wooden blocks (2, 3, 6, 8, 9, 10), a tube of toilet paper (9), dominoes (10), string (1, 2, 12), a broom (16), a hook (16), a jar (16), a shoe (16), and of course, a lamp (17).
To test the machine, it was used without human intervention. At first, there were the problems described above, but they were fixed, and once fixed, the machine was tested five times.

E. Data and Observations
Out of the five times the machine was tested, it worked all five without any intervention, save using the pulley to set the machine off.
Certain parts of the machine were hard to set back again once used, especially the dominoes, but the machine’s use once set up was quite simple and easy. Despite its elaborate design and excessive number of steps, the machine takes only twelve seconds to perform its task because many of the reactions, such as balls rolling or dominoes falling, happen quite quickly.

F. Discussion and Conclusion
The data supported the hypothesis. It worked consistently in exactly the manner the hypothesis predicted. It worked all five times, so it can be predicted that it will continue working if tested more.
The machine could be easier to set up. However, Rube Goldberg machines, due to their many steps, are inherently hard to set up. This means it might not be necessary to fix.
In the future, a version of this machine with more steps could be used. It could also have more anti-gravity powered steps. A machine that takes longer to complete its job is not usually important; however, in a Rube Goldberg machine, this could be good in that the viewer would have more time to see what was happening, and more complicated steps could be included.
A future Rube Goldberg machine could also be used to complete a more complex task. This task simply involved pushing a button; however, a future machine could complete a multi-part task or one that can’t be done simply using gravity power.
This machine is a good demonstration of different simple machines. It uses a pulley, an inclined plane, a wheel and axle, a first- and a third-class lever, and a wedge. This is a good demonstration of how simple machines can be used to create complex machines. A Rube Goldberg machine can be used to teach about simple machines in that in order to build one, one must first understand how different simple machines work.