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Class 1 (01/05/2022): Ideation Breakdown

  • Elizabeth House
  • Jan 3, 2022
  • 3 min read

Updated: Jan 10, 2022

After a lot of brainstorming and talking with Professor Pasquale, I finally landed on the idea of a Rube Goldberg machine for my project for this quarter. When it is complete, this machine will start a Keurig coffee maker, with an alarm clock acting as the catalyst for the chain reaction.


Some inspiration for the pieces or steps of the machine can be found here, which contains a Rube Goldberg machine for lemonade and runs for approximately 9 minutes. Other videos that aren't exactly Rube Goldberg machines but implement musically synchronized rigid body simulations can be found by user @enbiggen on TikTok. I also like the aesthetic of his videos as well.


My current idea for my Rube Goldberg machine has 13 major steps to it and they are as follows:

  1. An alarm clock rings on a night stand in a bedroom and shakes itself off the night stand, falling onto a catapult.

  2. The catapult launches a golf ball up into the air and it hits the underside of a platform that has a matchbox car on it, which creates a downward slope for the car to slide onto a toy race track.

  3. The matchbox car speeds downhill and turns the corner outside the bedroom to a staircase where it runs into a bag of precariously balanced marbles.

  4. The bag of marbles tips over and the marbles bounce down the stairs, one of them running into a Lego man on a parachute, which knocks him off the stairs

  5. The other marbles run into a paper weight placed on the edge of the stairs that is attached to a fan switch; the fan is turned onto high from the force of the paper weight falling.

  6. The wind from the fan blows the parachuting Lego man onto a platform where he knocks another Lego figure holding a straight pin onto a zipline.

  7. The ziplining Lego figure is propelled into the kitchen area and runs pin-first into a balloon hanging from a cabinet door, causing the balloon to burst. On top of the balloon sits a rubber ducky, which falls when the balloon bursts.

  8. The fall of the rubber ducky knocks over an open box of K-cups on the counter, causing one to fall out and tumble into a miniature wagon.

  9. The force of the K-cup falling pushes the wagon down a ramp that connects the counter to a kitchen island. The momentum of the downhill ride pushes the wagon and K-cup across the island and into a slot on a ski lift/ferris wheel.

  10. The ski lift/ferris wheel bridges the gap in between the other end of the kitchen island and the opposing counter where the Keurig sits. The lift hoists the K-cup into its designated place in the Keurig.

  11. The weight of the K-cup in the holder of the Keurig triggers a tripwire that releases a weight from above the Keurig to fall on the handle to close the Keurig lid so the K-cup is ready for brewing.

  12. The closing of the Keurig lid sets off another tripwire attached to a Nerf gun on the other side of the room, which pulls the trigger.

  13. The Nerf bullet hits the "BREW" button on the Keurig, and starts brewing the cup of coffee.


Ideally, a coffee mug would already be in place to catch the brewed coffee in this scenario, but if need be, I can create more steps for transporting and placing a mug, if time permits. Most Keurigs also have a water reservoir, so water transportation and simulation can be omitted.


To start this project, modeling any important aspects used in the actual machine will be needed. The main objects I need to start are:

  • Alarm clock

  • Matchbox car

  • Box fan

  • Two Lego figures

  • Rubber ducky

  • Box of K-cups + one stand-alone K-Cup

  • Miniature wagon

  • Keurig

  • Ski lift/Ferris wheel

  • Nerf Gun

Any other props such as marbles, the golf ball, the balloon, the race track, etc. that are foundationally simple shapes or not as geometrically complex would be modeled after the main props and/or as simulations are worked on. All main props will be modeled in Maya.


Most simulations in my machine rely on rigid body dynamics, with the exception of cloth for the parachute (and potentially the behavior of the balloon when it bursts) and the relatively small fluid simulation of coffee at the end of the machine. Because of this, each listed step of my machine will have its own file so computer GPU/CPU doesn't get bogged down by a lot of caches and to help improve general calculation and run time. These will be done in Houdini with imported geometry from Maya.











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