Tech & Biz

World's Least Efficient Hamburger

by Jordan Yerman | April 6, 2008 at 09:57 am

268 views | 7 Recommendations | 2 comments

A crack team of Purdue University students spent thousands of work- hours on a 156-step burger-matic... and their hard work paid off. The team has won the annual Rube Goldberg Machine Contest.

The winning team, the Purdue Society of Professional Engineers, have had plenty of practice at this— they've won two of the previous three contests. Their machine won them a regional prize earlier in the year, and for the Nationals they added another 55 steps. With somewhere around 5,000 man-hours of work in it, the victory seems well deserved, particularly when the rules stipulate that the task must be achieved in more than 20 steps.

(Gizmodo)

The videos to the right show the winning device as well as some of the other entries. I love this stuff.

[Emailed via news*at*nowpublic*dot*com; evidently the blockquote isn't displaying the source when sent via Mac OSX's Mail app, but hey- it's still extremely cool. The subject line becomes the headline and the body text becomes the story; this only works from email addresses linked to your account, and stories via email are routed to the World category by default. You can try this at home.]

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cynthia yoo

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 13:21 on April 6th, 2008

jordan, mmmm....burger-math.

Barry Artiste

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 15:26 on April 6th, 2008

jordan, I like this story. It's good stuff. Bite your tongue young man, there are no inefficient hamburgers, only inefficient Hamburger makers. Just remember next time Mr. Dubious Reporter, Hamburgers don't Kill, Chloresterol Kills. As for me, Weeelllll, ah likes me burgers slathered with a delicate bernaise sauce, melted Blue Cheese, with a hint of tomato, grown on the south side of the mountain on a toasted italian sesame bun and a side order of chilled Spam. Crap Deux. That is all !!

Sincerely

Lt. Colonel Harry Snapper Organs, Esquire (Mrs.)