cause and effect contraptions

April 7, 2006 10:04 PM

Incredible Machine 01 - clever Japanese Rube Goldberg type devices in action. Film clip, annoying soundtrack alert. (via digg)
posted by madamjujujive (27 comments total)

- eeek - wrong link posted, damn - here is the - duh.
posted by madamjujujive at 10:07 PM on April 7, 2006

Very Cool.
posted by phyrewerx at 10:28 PM on April 7, 2006

Some are ingenious, especially the one with the multiple balls.

Here's Incredible Machine 02.
posted by provolot at 10:44 PM on April 7, 2006

Wow. Some of those are not only diabolically ingenious and incredibly accurate, but improbable and even unlikely. I wish youtube's video streams were better quality, it's hard to tell what's going on in some of the faster actions.
posted by loquacious at 11:04 PM on April 7, 2006

So what does "pitagorasuicchi" mean? Incredible machine, I'm guessing, perhaps?
posted by squarehead at 11:27 PM on April 7, 2006

Since it's katakana, I'm thinking it's loan words. The best I can come up with is something having to do with Pythagoras. Which makes some kind of sense.
posted by squarehead at 11:32 PM on April 7, 2006

It's the name of a children's television program here in Japan. No telling what it's actually supposed to mean though. Here's the show's homepage.
posted by donkeymon at 11:47 PM on April 7, 2006

The kids at Keio certainly have a lot of free time...

heh, Gilgamesh Night ... Pythagora Switch ... I see a pattern here...

Wikipedia.ja has an article on this ... it's an NHK science show oriented towards kids.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 11:59 PM on April 7, 2006

I was in Tokyo in recently and I saw a show on TV which was based around (adult) competitors building contraptions like this. Some of them were wildly complex, taking 3-4 minutes to run their course. Any idea what the show was?
posted by the duck by the oboe at 1:22 AM on April 8, 2006

Why does the first frame of the Incredible Machine 01 video says "LOL, jews"?
posted by neckro23 at 3:20 AM on April 8, 2006

Woah, it does look like it says "LOL, jews". WTF?
posted by loquacious at 3:46 AM on April 8, 2006

Now that is how to post a video to the front page!
posted by caddis at 5:09 AM on April 8, 2006

Ooooo then it hits the little glasses and plays the song! Brilliant.

This is probably some sort of PBS inter-commercial break thing. For kids.

I wish someone had gotten me interested in this sort of thing when I was a kid.
*Insert comment about Japanese kids being generally brighter than American kids*
*auto industry analogy*
posted by Baby_Balrog at 8:35 AM on April 8, 2006

LOL, jews
posted by thefreek at 9:15 AM on April 8, 2006

Oh, man, my 2-year-old son LOVES this segment. He'll go tearing into the living room when he hears the little "pi-ta-go-ra su-i-tchi" jingle. This is NOT one of the more complicated ones, let me tell you. The are built by university engineering students, as I recall from the credits. I've often thought about recording and posting one. Right after this is "algorithym calisthenics" which is a line of people doing a chain of staggered calitsthenics, each person starting one move after his neighbor, so that one guy is swinging his arms left just as the guy on his left is ducking down. Ah, now I see Donkeymon has posted the home page, you can see the algorithym taisoh guys on the bottom right.
posted by planetkyoto at 9:26 AM on April 8, 2006

Does anyone else suspect that some of these required a lot of takes to get right? Some just seem too improbable, and that chaos would start taking a heavy toll. (I'm thinking especially of the one near the end where the ball rolls into a cone, which then spins and weaves unguided across the books)
posted by InnocentBystander at 9:44 AM on April 8, 2006

The one where the ball travells around the magnetic course is crazy.
posted by boo_radley at 9:58 AM on April 8, 2006

Great stuff, I loved it. But sadly yet another example of why this country is lapsing into a third world backwater. Our advanced Rube Goldberg funding is being slashed! It's insanity I tell you, INSANITY!!
posted by Skygazer at 10:36 AM on April 8, 2006

That was so freakin' awesome.
posted by quin at 10:41 AM on April 8, 2006

some of these are brilliant.
I got excited watching a string of marbles go through some substance and accelerate upon exiting.
posted by Busithoth at 11:06 AM on April 8, 2006

Glad to see Pythagora Switch representin'.
posted by Bugbread at 11:12 AM on April 8, 2006

annoying soundtrack alert

I thought the soundtrack was right on the money!
posted by iconjack at 11:24 AM on April 8, 2006

This is awesome. Anyone have a video clip of those algorithm calisthenics?
posted by furtive at 11:33 AM on April 8, 2006

No video clip of the calisthenics, but I have stick figure animation of the algoritm march for you (Click the words next to the little picture of the three guys, third choice down). The calistenics aren't as interesting as the algorithm march, because they're formed in pairs, instead of a long chain.
posted by Bugbread at 11:39 AM on April 8, 2006

If I had more patience, raw materials, and skill, I would totally make one of those.
posted by brain_drain at 12:01 PM on April 8, 2006

The bit where the marbles travelled between a couple of panes of (I'm guessing) glass, making them look like they were gliding through the air, that was awesome. And that bit where the ball was in a cup, and the whole thing glided back and forth over several books seemingly randomly? Also awesome. And the one where the magnets slowly rotated in series forcing their neighbour to follow their movement? Genius!

Broken-single-link-to-youtube posts really can the best of the web.

Oh, and I liked the soundtrack.
posted by The Monkey at 5:47 PM on April 8, 2006

The off-center hammers knocking the marble uphill left me giggling.
posted by eriko at 7:27 PM on April 8, 2006 [1 favorite]