Pharyngula

Posted by: Marcus | March 3, 2010 12:06 PM

Probably took for ever to get it right. Here's where their 'inspiration' no doubt came from:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGngcQb_0qg

Posted by: quesarah21 | March 3, 2010 12:13 PM

Very good. It was more creative than others I've seen. I particularly liked the mousetrap-flag waving, followed up with the typewriter pecking, carriage triggering the next step.

Posted by: Janine, She Wolf Of Pharyngula, OM | March 3, 2010 12:20 PM

Posted yesterday in the undead thread.

Posted by: https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawmLbd5yeH0T6dyrRAW6Gw3PIftFrR_F1LY | March 3, 2010 12:20 PM

Here are the details of the production:
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/03/ok-go-rube-goldberg/

Posted by: Matt Penfold | March 3, 2010 12:21 PM

I recognized some of the wooden train tracks as part of BRIO set like my children had.

My brother and I had a BRIO trainset as well. He had it shipped to OZ for his kids.

Posted by: Alverant | March 3, 2010 12:29 PM

I think I saw 9 other smashed cars in the background in one part.

Posted by: FrankT | March 3, 2010 12:35 PM

There are a few identifiable cuts. Such as the point where the camera stops at the curtains. Everything is stationary at that point, and so once the camera goes through the curtains, it's a new take. And since you can't see where the power sources for things are coming from at that point, there's no precision - it's just a bunch of stuff happening.

Posted by: Q.E.D | March 3, 2010 12:43 PM

I stand corrected by MS @ 10

The world needs more Rube Goldberg devices *with fire*

Posted by: Matt Penfold | March 3, 2010 12:50 PM

This reminds of an old BBC2 series called "The Great Egg Race".

It was presented by somewhat eccentric Professor called Heinz Woolf with a wonderful German accent. Each week two teams had to devise apparatus to perform a certain task using only the sort of materials you would find in an average house, shed and garage. The Egg part came from the fact the first series had the teams having to move eggs around without breaking them. Later series did not always involve eggs.

Posted by: dude070012 | March 3, 2010 12:57 PM

wow this is after they made that vid. with notre dame band

Posted by: Knockgoats | March 3, 2010 1:03 PM

But is it science?
[/Colgate Twins]

Posted by: JTDC | March 3, 2010 1:07 PM

60 takes, most within the first 30 seconds. That's when all the precisely calibrated stuff happens. The rest has very few opportunities for failure, so it's easy to reset it.

Full reset was over an hour.

Posted by: mikerattlesnake | March 3, 2010 1:17 PM

@15 FrankT

Are there identifiable cuts or identifiable places for potential cuts? Judging by their past videos they seem to have a pretty strict "one take" policy, so I'd give them the benefit of the doubt. As for "not seeing the power source for everything", you realize the magnitude and speed of what's going on makes that pretty impossible right? The camera seems to be struggling to keep up. Given the live audience and the band's interest in this sort of thing, I wouldn't suspect too much trickery.

@24 NiChrome

I suggested to a friend who posted this on facebook that this band should just make videos for good bands (though this particular song is not unpleasant).

Posted by: woozy | March 3, 2010 1:49 PM

I finally understand ID "science."

Damn it! I was going to make a joke about "I dunno... this whole thing seems like subtle indoctrination of an intelligent designer" but you beat me too it.

Posted by: nicholas.laux | March 3, 2010 1:58 PM

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/b8hhh/by_request_i_helped_build_ok_gos_rube_goldberg/

The "only 60 takes" is misleading. According to the people here who were helping, they said that "Action" was yelled over 200 times:

=====

Thanks for the kudos Peoria! "Takes" they counted as the machine going past a certain point, the tire, which was around 60. The dominoes and that speaker that pushes the bearing out were very fidgety and so the number of times that "Action!" was yelled was over 200. So those dominoes had to be reset 200 times, albeit sometimes only 4 as Mahdroo mentioned. =)

During one take we got all the way to the bottom floor and a series of things went wrong- the camera guy got hit with the barrel, causing the bowling ball to hit him instead of the target. But we realized later someone forgot to set the filing cabinet anyway so it wouldn't have worked. There were lots of those human errors.

Dominoes those ball bearings at the beginning were the most common problem, which was why we put them first.

They never changed jumpsuits, but they had to duct tape their crotches cuz they were falling apart. You can see the duct tape in the video =)

Posted by: JamesTiberiusKirk | March 3, 2010 2:25 PM

WOW!

Really fun to watch.

I liked the music as well.

Posted by: JJ | March 3, 2010 2:34 PM

Only if OK GO made better music. Awesome video (saw this yesterday on gizmodo.com), bad song.

Posted by: toth | March 3, 2010 2:39 PM

Y'all are crazy: OK Go are awesome.

Posted by: mikerattlesnake | March 3, 2010 2:51 PM

@mikeinmaine

meh, if anything I'd call it pleasantly ignorable. Racket is a bit strong.

Also: THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE! Though, I guess there's a lot of us mikes, even in this tiny state.

Posted by: and7barton | March 3, 2010 2:51 PM

At 40 seconds I vomited.
At 1 minute I tried to chew my own eyeballs.
At 1 minute 14 seconds I lost the will to live.
After that my mood seemed to go downhill rapidly and I had to run away.

Posted by: Haruhiist | March 3, 2010 3:11 PM

Pfft so many grumpy people here. Personally, I did like the music.

On a completely unrelated note, anyone seen this yet?

Posted by: chgo_liz | March 3, 2010 3:16 PM

FWIW, YouTube has at least 4 behind-the-scenes videos showing the process.

Posted by: MoonShark | March 3, 2010 3:31 PM

Ah, lovely futility. I'm as impressed that the cameraman navigated the maze of dangerous objects as I am of the contraption.

Anyway, this is a better OK Go song. If you like horribly catchy pop-rock.

Posted by: FrankT | March 3, 2010 3:48 PM

2:27. They don't have to have recut the video there, but they left themselves the ability to do so if they wanted to.

Posted by: Gus Snarp | March 3, 2010 3:53 PM

@48 - 50

I just assumed that there were earlier takes in which something went wrong or wasn't quite the way they wanted, but that nevertheless made it all the way through to the paint guns, so they are covered in paint at the beginning from an earlier take.

Posted by: Creature of the Universe | March 3, 2010 4:02 PM

wow what a chain of events! ...my favorite part was when th

Posted by: jcmartz.myopenid.com | March 3, 2010 4:11 PM

Cool!

Posted by: mikerattlesnake | March 3, 2010 4:18 PM

@48 mu

given how fast the camera had to whip around, I'm guessing it was just not as good of a shot as they would have liked. Something could have been out of rhythm too.

Posted by: pixelfish | March 3, 2010 4:19 PM

No offense to alglyn, but that's the second time the Honda ad has been mentioned as the probable inspiration, and I kinda wanna note that Rube Goldberg machines have been around for years. You might as well declare that the inspiration was this Sesame Street cartoon or the Mythbuster's episode with Rube Goldberg machines. Or maybe Wallace and Gromit. Or possibly one of the crazy dad's machines in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.

Posted by: Peter H | March 3, 2010 4:34 PM

" But is it science?

I would think it is mostly engineering."

Yep. F=MA (physics 101)

Posted by: charley | March 3, 2010 4:50 PM

Speaking of difficult takes, has anyone seen this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDk9jjdiXJQ

tl;dw version:

The Old Spice TV commercial where the guy moves from the bathroom shower to the boat to the horse is a single continuous take using a physical bathroom set on a crane, a boat set on a beach and a special trolley to move him from the boat to the horse while he keeps talking. The only CG is the objects (clam/diamonds/Old Spice) in his hand.

Posted by: Happy Tentacles | March 3, 2010 5:30 PM

Fun, but there were cuts. Reminded me of a car advert (Honda?) from about five years ago - which was all done in a single take - there were several features on 'The Making of the Ad'.

Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/CmcUpM0h2eQXK59uQE5a80Vb74cwyvFNMMk-#20c72 | March 3, 2010 5:37 PM

If anyone had a Mousetrap or Crazy Clock (blatant Mousetrap rip off, which I had) game, you know how touchy even these things can be.

Even though the game had a board telling you exactly where to place everything, there always seemed to be things that needed tweaking and this was a game for kids, yet! And furthermore, the tweaks were never the same from build to build.

So, yeah. Amazing!

-Dwarf Zebu

Posted by: thehuntbox | March 3, 2010 5:43 PM

Irreducible complexity?

Posted by: Zernk | March 3, 2010 5:53 PM

I ordered Der Lauf der Ding from Amazon the day I saw the Honda ad. It's a good thing DVDs don't wear out. We've played that movie thousands of times.

Some website had given Fischli and Weiss credit for the ad, but it's not true. They were talking about suing, but never did. At least a little of my money went to them instead of Honda. Check out Lauf der Ding. It's so so cool.

Posted by: Blondin | March 3, 2010 6:15 PM

PZ might have posted these before but they're pretty cool anyway...
the octapult:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0OTX4IwSOo
and the rotapult:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dauoL7U7zEU&feature=related

Posted by: F | March 3, 2010 7:41 PM

61

Yep. F=MA (physics 101)

So, you are saying that they discovered that F=MA in the making of this video? Because even if they applied the equation in building the Device (out of probably 20 other equations that would be connected with this in some way), that isn't doing science.

As to Physics 101, I surely hope that kids are still learning that F=MA prior to high school, let alone college.

Posted by: Peter H | March 3, 2010 8:17 PM

My putting in "F=MA" was just a bit of levity; certainly without that basic relationship, none of their wacky scheme would have worked - and the remainder of the universe would be in tough shape. I was not indicating that such a basic understanding of mass & acceleration should be left to college years (a 6-year old can readily grasp demonstrations of F=MA). It's a cliché to pose "course 101" as indicating something at the very basic level. I'm not saying the group "discovered" anything, but that they had a great deal of fun in applying a known, simple, fundamental principle.

Posted by: F | March 3, 2010 10:14 PM

Peter H

Sorry if I sounded too serious. I didn't mean to be pedantic or anything. The Physics 101 bit was a jab at the general educational weirdness in the U.S.

I guess I miscalculated your seriousness/levity ratio.

gmartincv

Well, we had non-AP maths including differential equations, I assume the AP coursed would have them as well. Nothing of that intensity in the Physics courses, though a fair bit of physics-related math was covered (mostly applied, but I recall having to show how some things were derived).

I did take a Physics 101 in college, which was entertaining, but covered nothing I hadn't seen in high school physics (quite possibly less), and surely did not involve differential equations (nor much math at all, really). I'll guess there are 100-level physics courses which do.

Now you fellows have me all interested in physics maths. I've not done much in the way of such interesting math in a long while, aside from working through some equations to make sure i could understand something I was reading.

Cheers to the both of you.

Straying off topic:
href="http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,681525,00.html">The
Bomb for Beginners: A DIY Guide to Going Nuclear - SPIEGEL ONLINE -
News - International

Posted by: H.H. | March 4, 2010 1:00 AM

I don't understand people who say the song isn't good. I think it's freaking amazing. I can't get it out of my head. I even like the marching band version.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJKythlXAIY&feature=fvst

Posted by: ChristineLynne | March 4, 2010 9:06 AM

Thanks so much for this - it has totally captured my 6yo daughter's imagination. She can't stop talking about how she's going to make a "contraption" for the science fair next year, and what items she will use.

Getting little girls into physics - hell yeah!

Posted by: JNorris | March 4, 2010 1:05 PM

A salute to Rube Goldberg, and the best part was the spoons and water glasses.

Posted by: SQB | March 7, 2010 6:55 AM

it has totally captured my 6yo daughter's imagination