Contraption Maker

What is a Rube Goldberg machine?

Before you get started building, it's helpful to know a little background about Rube Goldberg and his famous machines. Rube Goldberg was a famous cartoonist and inventor. His cartoons showed complicated machines that were used to do simple tasks. An example of one of his inventions, the Self-Operating Napkin is shown on the right. Each letter in the diagram is an extra step that starts with Professor Butts putting the soup in his mouth and ends with the napkin swinging across his face back and forth. Can you figure out what each of the other steps are doing?

Choosing a Smart goal

When using Contraption Maker as a project in class, you'll need to decide whether you would like to spend your time solving pre-made puzzles or creating your own contraptions. If you choose to solve pre-made puzzles, you will choose Puzzles from the main menu. You'll then see a variety of puzzle packs to choose from. I would suggest choosing Tutorial Puzzles or Easy Does It.

If you would rather create your own contraptions with no limitations (besides the restrictions you place when writing your SMART goal), then you will want to choose Maker Lab from the main menu. You'll then have a blank canvas and access to every machine in Contraption Maker. If this is your first time, it would be extremely helpful to start off with some of the basic tutorials first.

Recording Your Contraptions

As part of your presentation, it will be helpful to show off the Rube Goldberg machines in action, so make sure to use the recording feature of Contraption Maker so that we can see the inventions from start to finish! Click the video camera icon to start your machine and the recording at the same time. When you are done, click on stop. Choose Open Containing Folder when your recording is finished. The file shown can be dragged into your Google Drive folder to then be viewed during your presentation.