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Purdue Engineers Break Own Rube Goldberg Record
New Rube Goldberg machine incorporates 300 steps, breaking old record of 244 steps by a comfortable margin.
The Purdue Society of Professional Engineers and the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers have developed a new 300-step Rube Goldberg machine that blows past the Guinness World Record Rube Goldberg machine that used 244 steps. Of special note is the fact that the Purdue Society of Professional Engineers also happens to be the owner of the current world record, having also been the creator of the 244-step contraption.
To construct the new 300-step machine, the teams spent more than 5,000 hours of time on the task. The machine was designed to accomplish every task ever assigned in the Rube Goldberg competition’s history (which began in 1949). Some of these tasks include: juicing an orange, peeling an apple, toasting bread, making a hamburger, changing a light bulb, and sharpening a pencil.
Though the 300-step machine did qualify for the world record, as determined by the World Records Academy, it did not win this year’s Rube Goldberg competition. That honor went to St. Olaf College of Northfield, MN, which won with a 191-step machine with an end-of-the-world theme including music from “Jaws”, Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and the “Indiana Jones” theme.
Watch a video of the Purdue Society of Professional Engineers/Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers 300-step machine in action below.
David Greenfield has been covering industrial technologies, ranging from software and hardware to embedded systems, for more than 20 years. His principal areas of coverage for Automation World focus on technologies deployed for factory and process automation. Contact David at [email protected] or follow him on twitter @DJGreenfield.
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