Purdue Students Win Rube Goldberg Contest

Dekortage writes "How long does it take to make a burger? Students from Purdue University's Society of Professional Engineers won the 2008 Rube Goldberg contest with a device that requires 156 steps to assemble a burger. According to the team captain, 'We put 4,000 to 5,000 man-hours into this machine since September, and all the hard work has been well worth it.' That's a long time to wait for dinner." Here's a video of the winning entry in operation.

Rube Goldberg

[MyNymWasTaken (879908)]

That's Goldberg.

http://www.rubegoldberg.com/ [rubegoldberg.com]

Re:Rube Goldberg

[reverseengineer (580922)]

The submitter is still waiting for the cat to frighten the pigeon into laying the egg that will roll down the chute to land on the lever that opens the cage so the trained monkey can run over and press the letter "D" on the keyboard.

Re:

[The Ultimate Fartkno (756456)]

You magnificent bastard...

The best part about Purdue University's machine

[by Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't even make a burger, it just shoots you.

Wrong Video?

[by Anonymous Coward]

I read burger, but I see orange juice...

Re:Wrong Video?

[by Anonymous Coward]

Here's a link with a story that depicts the machine, although we don't get to watch it all the way through:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Q4fTPwXy4U [youtube.com]

Re:

[snl2587 (1177409)]

Saw that coming...

nice

[joe 155 (937621)]

that's pretty impressive. (It should have said in TFS though that it was their objective to make it have as many steps as possible) But I do have to wonder if it maybe wasn't the case that some of the steps were useless - things like "turn burger 1 degree clockwise, turn burger 1 degree anti-clockwise" - but I suppose even so it is an impressive feat of uselessness

Re:nice

[lilomar (1072448)]

You don't know what a Rube Goldberg Machine [wikipedia.org] is, do you?

Re:

[gnick (1211984)]

It does seem strangely appropriate that creating this impressively convoluted burger maker took an equally impressive 4k-5k man hours...

Re:nice

[Hatta (162192)]

Oh wise one, what would you have us spend our hours doing? Does there have to be a point to do something fun?

Re:

[Timmmm (636430)]

I agree. Is fun (or happiness, via fun) not the point of life? Even for the religions --- who would want to go to heaven if it wasn't fun there? If anyone can think of a better ultimate goal that doesn't just come down to 'making me happy' (or perhaps 'making other people happy') then I'd love to hear it.

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[Missing_dc (1074809)]

42

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[Surt (22457)]

You might want to go to heaven regardless of the fun level if the alternative is unending infinite agony.

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[i_b_don (1049110)]

Wow... That's an unbelievability insane statement. Have you ever been to engineering school? Do you know what an engineer does? Engineering is the PRACTICAL use of scientific knowledge. You can learn all the equations in the world but until you actually apply them to BUILD something it's worthless crap filling your mind. You might as well close your school books and go home.

There is no better application in school than doing a project similar to this. Robot building projects and the like were the bes

Re:

[Hatta (162192)]

I would have been more impressed if it actually cooked the burger.

Bad camerawork

[Kelz (611260)]

I couldn't help but notice that with the crappy camerawork you have no idea what process is going on at once. Can anyone find a better video?

Re:

[fm6 (162816)]

If you really want to follow the process, you need to know all the steps. Getting that into a video would be a major production in itself. I'd settle for a written summary.

Where's the Beef?

[Jason Earl (1894)]

I watched the full video, and I didn't see any hamburgers get made. Did I miss something?

Re:Where's the Beef?

[Tetsujin (103070)]

Well, if you followed the link and it was a guy singing about how he's never gonna give you up or let you go, then you followed the wrong link.

Re:

[Tetsujin (103070)]

Ah, quite right, I should have checked the online lyrics guide [internetis...siness.com] before posting...

Re:Where's the Beef?

[micksam7 (1026240)]

The video is of last year's machine, which made orange juice.

Orange juice burger??

[Feanturi (99866)]

The winning entry according to the article was the burger maker. But the video linked in the summary is a machine making orange juice.

Re:Orange juice burger??

[tist (1086039)]

This video shows orange juice in the making.
The video to the burger maker is here: http://news.uns.purdue.edu/UNS/rube/rube.index.html [purdue.edu]

Enjoy

Re:

[Sneeka2 (782894)]

Thanks, but unfortunately the same incompetent cameramen as in posts video. Could they possibly show any less of what's going on, next to pointing the camera straight at the ceiling?

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[QuantumG (50515)]

Man, why do all video players suck? (except google/youtube)

What's so hard about this? Download the video, play it when you have enough downloaded. Why does everyone try to "buffer" or measure speed throughput or something.

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[mattOzan (165392)]

The winning entry according to the article was the burger maker. But the video linked in the summary is a machine making orange juice.

That's the burger of the future, man! We're going to be drinking tacos, steaks, souffles, you-name-it!

Re:

[compro01 (777531)]

they linked to the winner is last year's contest.

Wrong video?

[webrunner (108849)]

The video seems to be of last year's Perdue entry (which was an Orange Juice machine)

Yummy!

[Forthan Red (820542)]

I like my hamburgers without the pulp.

Burger with net negative calorie count

[davidwr (791652)]

Imagine if a human did all of those steps. He would burn more calories than he consumed.

Burgers as health food? Who knew.

Re:Burger with net negative calorie count

[Applekid (993327)]

I'd mod you up, but the damn marble I let go to drop into the basket to pull the string through the pully to release the pin to pop the spring to strike the match against the abrasive pad to burn the rope that releases the weight to hit the macro key on my keyboard that selects the dropdown item, scrolls to the bottom, and hits the "Moderate Posts" button came off its track.

Sorry about that.

Re:Burger with net negative calorie count

[bark76 (410275)]

It's nice to see someone admit that they don't have the marbles to mod a post up.

I have a better idea

[Minwee (522556)]

Next year, can we please build an insanely complicated machine which will beat the entire membership of the Phi Chapter of Theta Tau with the Naughty Web Designer Stick? After being exposed to their Flash Monstrosity that's something I would like to see happen over and over again.

Re:

[CompMD (522020)]

As a Triangle, I will happily assist in the beating of Theta Taus. :)

Title in 156 easy steps??

[zappepcs (820751)]

Seriously! I thought this country was running out of engineers? Guess we just needed better problems. For anyone interested in a bit of GolDberg fun, try the made-of-Lego Great Ball Contraption http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&output=googleabout&btnG=Search+our+site&q=lego%20gbc [google.com]
Truly team effort in creating time wasting fun.

Where is MicroSoft's entry?

[dr_db (202135)]

I am sure that all admins can attest to the fact that MS products require a ridiculous number of extra steps to perform simple tasks.

In tribute to Rube Goldberg

[MobyDisk (75490)]

In tribute to Rube Goldberg, the web site is done in Flash instead of HTML, and all the text is really bitmaps.

whay is "fast food" still so labor-intensive?

[peter303 (12292)]

The local big-name burger still takes a minimal staff of about 6, and maybe 20 during rush hour. A lot of the work is taking the order, making payment, and filling the order. We havent really progressed that much past the automats (cafeteria vending slots) of the 1930s or Ray Kroks one-button milkshake machines he sold before starting McDonalds in the 1950s.

A couple years back I saw self-serve terminals at a MacDonalds. But it was a GUI disaster and complicated to use. It had lots of subscreens for

Re:

[iocat (572367)]

Turns out it takes less time and money to have one expert (eg a trained teen-ager) listen to what you want and enter it than it does to have you enter it yourself. A few Arbys in CA tried self-service terminals, but it was so confusing and impersonal they all switched back (or went under).

Re:

[el_gordo101 (643167)]

McD's has actually started outsourcing the "may I take your order" [arstechnica.com] part of the equation. Don't know how much more efficient it is, though...

Here's a video?

[mustafap (452510)]

>Here's a video of the winning entry in operation.

Duh. Bye bye video.

If You Like This Kind of Stuff

[Nom du Keyboard (633989)]

If you like this kind of stuff, get a copy of The Way Things Go (1987), a 30-minute documentary of a whole series of events, each triggering the next.

What about the cow?

[NewsWatcher (450241)]

I would have thought the first step was killing the cow or pig. I guess it is back to the drawing board.

Contest is rigged

[gray code (323372)]

I'm a member of another chapter of the same engineering fraternity and have competed in the Rube Goldberg competition. The contest is a farce. Purdue wins every year. It's held at Purdue; Purdue profs are the judges; it's held during Parents' Weekend for Pete's sake. Purdue knows before anyone else what the requirements will be and they don't have to worry about making their entry portable enough to go further than across campus. The headline should just read "Purdue holds Xth annual Theta Tau Rube Gol

Re:

[gray code (323372)]

Ok, so out of 6 years Purdue lost twice? What was your point again? Obviously they don't win EVERY time, but the number of times they DO win is questionable, to say the least.

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[Drewmeister (1036004)]

If I'm not mistaken, here's an alternate video: YouTubed! [youtube.com]

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[Minwee (522556)]

Are you trying to Lennon-roll us with that video?

Re:

[Minwee (522556)]

You're right. Lennon was from the UK.

Do you have any other insight into the history of the Beatles you would like to share with us?

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[SCHecklerX (229973)]

Mmmmmmm Mmmmmmm!

You ever have a big kahuna burger?