Rube Goldberg Device Takes 300 Steps to Pop a Balloon (with video)
A team of engineers at Purdue University has set the world record for “Largest functional Rube Goldberg machine” with a mind-boggling contraption that takes 300 steps to inflate and pop a balloon.
In doing so, they bested themselves, as they had the previous record, with 244 steps.
While they’ve captured the current record as set by the World Records Academy (which has more than 2,300 records listed online and more than 250,000 in an offline database), they’re still waiting on verification from Guinness World Records, which is a lengthy process. (They achieved the Guiness in March 2011.)
They broke the record on March 31 at the National Rube Goldberg Machine Competition, after six months and thousands of attempts for the individual components. The machine had its first perfect run on March 29 and the video below records that.
I wish the video guys who captured the action had been able to zoom in a bit more, because it’s a dizzying array in 2:17 minutes to behold — especially with the team cheering on in the background. But I did catch some things on repeated viewings that made me chuckle, and yes, even gasp (in awe and appreciation that so much could go into such a simple task).
It had the usual water flowing through funnels and ball rolls, but it also added some perks, like toasting a piece of bread, a mini-putt on a mini-golf hole (upside down, no less!) and a watermill. But each module — that is task — was so clever in itself, that to see it choreographed as a whole is a real treat.