Rube Slowberg

This one was buried in our tips line for a couple of months, but we’re glad it eventually surfaced. [Bob Partington] built the “Rube Slowberg” contraption – it’s billed as the world’s slowest Rube Goldberg Machine. The golf ball that he tee’d off took six weeks to reach it’s rather dramatic end.

Rube Goldberg machines are fascinating, but most often the fun ends quite quickly. [Bob] decided to slow it all down and it took several hacks to get that done. Thankfully for us, the edited video with extensive use of stop-motion and fast forwards brings the chase down to under three minutes.

Check out the video below. It starts with the Golf ball riding a slow boat on molasses, hitching a ride on a Tortoise, running through a series of melting popsicle sticks and then being propelled one tiny bit at a time by a bunch of growing grass. If you are interested is seeing behind the scenes, watch the other video where he talks a little about how he managed to pull it off.

[Thanks Steve via Gizmodo]

16 thoughts on “Rube Slowberg

      1. DMV offices here in the states are notoriously overcrowded, understaffed, and generally a miserable place to wait when you – and every other poor Joe and Jane in there – clearly has much better things to be doing with their time. There’s frequently cranky children, folks with dubious hygiene, and The Talky One. There are about 20 workstations/desks, but often five or fewer people on duty at a given time. It is, if this is even possible, worse than retail.

        1. We generally have similar issues in Australia for all of our government offices. I was at the department of Births, Deaths and Marriages earlier today, and there were so many people sitting around on the floor that it looked like a disaster relief shelter.

          Do they provide seating at the DMV?

          1. The DMV does fortunately providing seething on somewhat comfortable seats, they are padded, but they have no back.

            I can imagine the jokes in Australia about the slow wait in the department of Births, Deaths and Marages.

      1. Yeah, it was an interesting video but in my mind it doesn’t qualify as a Rube Goldberg unless you only have to start one thing. Several of those devices messed that up unfortunately.

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