THE RUBE GOLDBERG MACHINE

AN ES 62 PROJECT

I. INTRODUCTION

A Rube Goldberg machine is a contraption, invention, device or apparatus that is deliberately

over-engineered to perform a simple task in a complicated fashion, generally including a chain reaction.

The expression is named after American cartoonist and inventor Rube Goldberg. Rube Goldberg (1883-

1970) was a Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist best known for his zany invention cartoons. He was born

in San Francisco on the 4th of July 1883 and graduated from U. Cal Berkeley with a degree in

engineering. His first job at the San Francisco Chronicle led to early success, but it wasnt until he

moved to NYC and began working for Hearst publications that he became a household name. Over the

years the concept of Rube Goldberg machine become famous and used as an educational tool to train

students in creating science projects. Through this project, students are able to see clearly how energy

transform into other forms by comparing the energy and momentum of the machine, students apply

their knowledge on conservation of energy and conservation of momentum to analyze each collision.

II. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

The Rube Goldberg Machine was greatly used in many science projects such as

workshops, contests and experiments since it greatly involves energy transformation from one

form to another. Consequently, this challenges the creativity of the students to apply their

knowledge in physics and hence makes the project very interesting. In physics, energy is a

quantity that is often understood as the ability a physical system has to produce changes on

another physical system. There are different types of energy, but this project mainly focusses

on the mechanical energy, that is the energy associated with the motion (kinetic energy) or
position (potential energy) of an object. In this project, energy transformation from potential

energy to kinetic energy happens when objects fall from higher position to lower. As a result,

the object gains more speed as the height of the object from the ground decreases hence

increasing its kinetic energy. By conservation of energy, this kinetic energy is equal to its

potential energy unless there is an external work done by non-conservative forces on the system

such as work done by friction. This kinetic energy gained due to its motion can be used to do

work on other objects. Through collision it can change the momentum of a domino at rest to

cause a chain reaction. These collisions can be either an elastic collision, in which both the

momentum and the kinetic energy of the system is conserve, or it can be an inelastic collision

where objects might stick together and move as one. These energy transformations vary

interchangeably from one form to another depending on the set-up and can be analyzed

thoroughly through the concept of work, energy and momentum.

III. DISCUSSION

The objective of our Rube Goldberg Machine is to off the candle light. Figure

1 below shows the whole picture of our project.

Figure 1 above also shows each component of the machine bounded by the red line and is

numbered based on the order of the chain reaction made by its components.

Step 1:

Figure 2. First Component

The Rube Goldberg Machine starts by initially releasing a marble of mass m from an

inclined plane of height h titled at some angle . At this position, the marble has its

maximum gravitational potential energy = . Furthermore, due to gravity, the

marble experiences a net force = directed along the hypotenuse of the

inclined plane, causing the marble to accelerate downward. As the marble descends the

plane, its potential energy decreases, herby effectively converting it to kinetic energy

as the marble speeds up. However, due to the position of the obstacles, the marbles

speed and energy is minimized due to the collisions with the obstacles, making the

marble land with a controlled speed.

Step 2:

As the marble continues to roll down with a controlled speed, it is then designed to collide with

a circular object in such a way that the collision would be elastic so that its kinetic energy will

be completely transferred to the circular object in order for it to gain more momentum and move
towards the other end. This became possible due to the conservation of momentum. As the ball

colides with the circular object, the balls momentum became zero while the circular object,

initialy at rest, gains momentum equal to the balls initial momentum.

Step 3:

Now that the circular object gains momentum and kinetic energy, it starts to move to the right

and inevitably collides with the ping pong ball. Since the circular object has velocity and is

heavier than the ping pong ball, the circular object has higher momentum than the ping pong

ball with zero momentum since it is at rest. Due to the conservation of momentum, as the

circular object collides with the ping pong ball, the ping pong ball gains high speed due to its

smaller mass, hence gaining more kinetic energy as it slides down to the right.
Step 4:

Moreover, as the ping pong ball hits the domino, it forces the popsicle barrier to move out of

place. This will cause another marble positioned at some height above the ground to move along

the inclined plane due to the component of the gravitational force it experiences along its

motion. This marble then becomes a trigger, for this chain reaction.

Step 5:

Now as the last marble rolls along the last inclined plane, it gains more speed as it moves

downward due to the conversion of potential energy to kinetic energy. The barriers planted

along the path of the marble has little to no effect and is knocked out of the way as the marble

passes. This is due the high momentum and kinetic energy of the marble as it descends.

Step 6:

At the moment the marble descends, it hits the first domino herby transferring some of its

kinetic energy, causing the dominos to fall, following a chain reaction due to the positions of

the domino.
Final Step:

Finally, as the last domino falls towards the support under a heavy wood, the wood tends to roll

down towards the left. This is due to the fact that the gravity is acting downward. At the moment

the support falls, the equilibrium condition of the wood is shattered because of the gravitational

force at the left side. This then triggered the wood to roll towards the left which then increases

the tension to the string connected to the wood, pulling the water at the other end causing it to

fall towards the candle. Finally, the water from the glass hits the candle causing the fire to burn

out.
Difficulties and Problems:

One of the difficulties we encountered is that we struggled too much on starting our

project since there are many ideas that came up to our minds and we were confused of what

idea we should implement. Thus, we consumed too much time just by starting our project.

Aside from that, we also take time in selecting the objective of our machine since there are

more interesting task that are not commonly done by previous works, but we end up a simple

idea like turning off the light of a candle since we are limited only on the materials. Lastly,
the most difficult part is when we try to run our machine and the machine wont able to

complete the task because of the lapses in some components especially on the 4th component.

Thereby, we tried to troubleshoot the problem and perform some adjustments and

successfully execute the task on the 20th run.

These are the materials that we used in creating our Rube Goldberg Machine:

14x14 board

Popsicle sticks

ping pong ball

Marbles

Scotch tape

Cartolina paper

Domino

2x 2 x 12 wood

String

Plastic glass

Candle

2.2m hollow-cut wood

IV. CONCLUSION

Despite of all the difficulties and problems we encountered. All the time and effort we

spent. We were greatly enjoyed and learned a lot of things from this task. That is, we are able

to apply our knowledge in engineering mechanics such as the transformation of energy in one

form to another, the conservation of energy and the conservation of momentum that we attained

in our class ES62 (Dynamics of Rigid Bodies) by our very own great teacher, Engr. Fer

Mykiel Gonzales. Moreover, through this project, we also gained friendship and teamwork and
thus learning how to work with other people with different values in life and hence, this also

served as an experience in working with people in the near future.

THE RUBE GOLDBERG MACHINE

AN ES 62 PROJECT

In Partial Fulfilment to the Requirements

Submitted by:
Team BADLUNGON IMPULSE
John Vincent S. Bondaug
Kirk Patrick Caada
Dio Valdez
Anthony Ryan Aquino

Submitted to:
Engr. Fer Mykiel Gonzales