Kitchen-themed Rube Goldberg Machine

The UT Austin ASME design team historically participates in a Rube Goldberg machine competition, in which teams design and build a complex chain reaction sequence to perform a simple step at the very end. This year, we competed in Texas’ Southern Chain Reaction Competition.

The final step was to ring a doorbell, and we decided we wanted our machine to be kitchen-themed. We started building the frame of our machine in the fall, but there was a lot to do as the deadline approached. I brainstormed and collaborated with other team members to come up with a basic chain of steps before continuing working on building. In the process, I also developed a project management system to keep us on track.

I worked on individual steps and troubleshooted the building process and chain reaction sequence multiple times. Some examples of our steps included 'cookbooks' that fell and turned on a coffee maker, a 'boat' made from a yogurt container that sailed across a sink, and 'cereal' that fell out of a pitcher into a blender.

Ultimately, our machine was built with the required number of chain reaction steps by competition day, and we won the Challenge Step award for successfully incorporating more advanced steps into the chain reaction.

See a video of our machine on Purdue Engineering Student Council's Facebook here.