Rube Goldberg

So you need to get salt from one end of the table to the other. You could just stand up and walk it down, or you could do what Joseph’s Machines did, and build a ridiculously complicated Rube Goldberg machine to perform the task for you.

After making a machine that can automatically pet his dog, woodworker Matt Thompson decided to make something nice for himself – an Adirondack chair that can scratch his back and massage his scalp automatically

Like many of us, Joseph Herscher doesn’t always have time to get up from his desk to take a lunch break. So, he did what any enterprising inventor would do – he built himself an overly complicated Rube Goldberg machine to effortlessly feed himself a meal.

Thirsty for some lemonade? If you’ve got 8 minutes to spare, you can have a glass, courtesy of this complex collaboration from machine makers Sprice Machines, DoodleChaos, TheInvention11, Hevesh5, 5MadMovieMakers, DrComplicated, and SmileyPeaceFun.

This ridiculously complicated Rube Goldberg machine from DaksDominos uses dozens of ping pong balls, Hot Wheels tracks, string, dominoes, toilet paper rolls, plastic cups, glass bottles, and popsicle sticks to perform a simple task – dispensing a length of Scotch tape.

Marble and domino enthusiast Kaplamino’s latest creation is an impressive tilted maze. The most entertaining parts are the ones where magnets, small catapults and other objects fling the titular marble through the different parts of the maze.

Tinkerer of things DoodleChaos set up a maze of Jenga blocks, dominoes, sticks, magnets, and other bits and bobs, and precisely placed them such that a series of ball bearings dropped into the them syncs up perfectly with Tchaikovsky’s Waltz of the Flowers.

What you’re looking at is an oddly satisfying contraption in which a roll of tape meanders its way through a maze with extraordinary skill. It’s from a Japanese kids show which featured one of these wonderful machines every week. Find more on KeN KeN’s channel.

Peter Browne and his buddy Mervyn Huggett spent around 1,000 hours making a Rube Goldberg machine that delivers food and fun. The Sunday Morning Breakfast Machine can make a slice of toast, a soft-boiled egg and a cup of tea or coffee all at once.

We’ve seen all manner of Rube Goldberg machines over the years, but never one as precise as this one from Seiko, that uses some 1200 watch parts and watchmaking tools in its design. It required a little human assist along the way, but it’s still pretty awesome.

YouTuber berlagawesome spent a total of 140h creating and trying to get his 175-step Rube Goldberg machine to work completely. There’s a thrift shop’s worth of odds and ends in there, and halfway through we actually forgot what its purpose was. Single camera perspective here.

Bob Partington created the world’s slowest Rube Goldberg machine, driven by molasses, a turtle, melting popsicles, and other things that take forever. Thankfully, the tedious 6+ week long process has been reduced to three minutes for your viewing pleasure.

3M spent 1,400 hours creating this sophisticated Rube Goldberg machine. The result is a wonderful maze driven by physics, chemistry and 25,000 Post-it Notes. The pendulums were both exciting and relaxing.

Formlabs made a Rube Goldberg machine using its new Tough Resin. Compatible with the Form 1 and Form 1+ 3D printers, Tough Resin is durable, rugged and flexible, making it ideal for high-impact and high-stress use.

YouTube and Vine trickster Zach King created this wacky video which features what appears to be a typical Rube Goldberg machine, but that has magical powers thanks to the wonders of editing and post-production.

A laptop sets off a recurring sequence of objects interacting in both the real world and inside its operating system in this creative take on the Rube Goldberg machine by animator Evelien Lohbeck.

To promote their high-speed optical internet service, Japan’s au Hikari, they created a sort of Rube Goldberg machine that uses a single beam of light as its primary means of activation. Watch how they made the video here.

This impressive Rube Goldberg contraption was built to promote the awesome platform adventure game Leo’s Fortune. With its use of trains, clocks and saws, it does a good job representing some of the game’s levels.

Lovers of Rube Goldberg, music and history, have we got the thing for you – a clever 90 second chronicle of recorded music, told through spoken word and a chain reaction show made from assorted musical equipment. (Thanks Steve!)

Tim Fort aka Kinetic King used a variety of objects as dominoes to make this massive Rube Goldberg machine for the music video of Tuna Melt, the single from Fool’s Gold DJs A-Trak and Tommy Trash.

Fueled by his hatred of the filling in Oreo cookies, physicist and copywriter David Neevel invented the awesome OSM, a specialized Rube Goldberg machine that separates the cookie from the cream.

An incredible, mind-bending Rube Goldberg contraption that seemingly defies gravity, performing its trickery with what we’re guessing was a bunch of magnets and a moving camera rig.

We love human Rube Goldberg vids; here, the Red Bull Kluge combines the agile athletic prowess of Lolo Jones, Danny MacAskill, Robbie Maddison and more with complex machinery. (Thanks everyone!)

Definitely the most complex Rube Goldberg machine we’ve ever seen. It’s got shipping containers, buses and people, including freerunner Jason Paul who pulled off lots of scary jumps.

We’re not sure this is largest Rube Goldberg machine, but it’s definitely the most complex – built by Purdue engineers with 300 steps to achieve its goal of blowing up and popping a balloon.

This is 7-year old Audri. He built a Rube Goldberg machine monster trap. It’s a commendable feat, but his real accomplishment is embracing the fact that one’s life won’t always go according to plan.

2D Photography spent the past 6 months building a very elaborate Rube Goldberg machine that spans multiple rooms. It does take a handful of pictures, but it takes its sweet time before doing so.

Designed by studio HeyHeyHey, Melvin the Magical Mixed Media Machine is the most complicated Rube Goldberg contraption we’ve ever seen. It’s purpose? Promoting itself.

Despite the fact that the board game Mousetrap never worked when we were kids, that didn’t stop Mark Perez from building a life-size version of the contraption. Show your support on Kickstarter.

Alex Crawford and Austin Nelson perfectly capture the spirit of the Rube Goldberg machine, creating the most ridiculously convoluted method of snapping an instant photo of themselves.