For today’s post I will being writing about a Rube Goldberg Machine that I found on youtube under the title of “Red Ball Adventure”, a link to the video will be found below at the end of the post. For this Rube Goldberg machine we are greeted with a peg board filled with screws, and resting on these screws are three pieces of wood inclined downward and have a groove cut in the middle to keep the red marble in place. The first piece of wood is completely flat and hold the red marble. A small plastic hand pushes it forward and the marble begins its journey. As it goes down each of the alternating ramps it encounters screws staggered downwards like steps. The red marble rolls down these steps and onto a new continues downward ramp.
Once on the ramp it hits a pencil and is stopped by a screw hanging from a wire. The pencil sets of a grey marble above the red one, which sets off a chain reaction of the same kind until after about a foot above the red ball a grey ball falls into a bucket that is part of a pulley system that moves the hanging screw out of the way and the red marble continues on. From here the red marble rolls down the ramp and uses its momentum and energy to hit a silver marble. Which the silver marble uses to pull up the red marble to a second higher ramp by pulling down a piece of track.
Here the red marble encounters the same problem of being stopped, but this time by a pixie stick. When it hits this stick a small silver marble is released and falls into another basket pulley system lifting the stick and allowing passage to the marble. Once passed this the marble uses its new downward momentum to hit a hammer that launches it up a ramp which causes a silver marble to break free and allows this silver marble to open the next gate for the red marble through a trip plate system.
This time the red marble hits a green marble and stops which frees a blue marble that frees the red marble so it can continue. Up next the red marble continues it journey downward and falls into a basket, attached to a weight, which allows an orange marble to roll down a ramp and push a weight over the edge of this ramp. This causes the red marble to sling shot up the ramp to another level. After this the red marble enters into a Ferris wheel looking structure, as it goes around it frees a blue marble which causes a chain reaction until one falls into the Ferris wheel freeing the red marble. From here the marble enters another basket delicate attached to a spring and frees the basket. This causes the stored energy in the spring to release and launch the red marble up and into a pulley system that opens another gate letting it down the course.
Now the marble is shot into a plinko game when it falls into a spring launcher that is set off by a blue marble it hits. This cause and effect system continues to propel the red marble forward until it reaches a finish line for another two minutes.
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