eFMyLife By: Ryan McCarter, Josh Baxter, Jon Ward, Nick Graham, and Lavin Parwani

Meet The Team Josh Lavin Ryan Nick Jon

Introduction Our objective was to build a Rube Goldberg Device, that fit in a meter cubed box. The restrictions included the fact that the device must run by itself, have at least five steps, and cost no more than 20$. The name eFMyLife was developed based on the popular website where ironic and complicated situations make simplistic things in real life more complicated, much like Rube Goldberg Devices.

Materials Wood Desk Bell Wooden Car Fishing Line Fishing Weights Pulley Dominos Marbles

The Run Down… A small car rolls down the decline. The car knocks a marble Through a hole. The marble then rolls down this incline The marble activates this lever The lever hits this marble sending it into the tubing. The marble activates the dominoes The dominoes release a weight that activates the pulley ringing the bell.

Design and Construction Keeping our overall design simplistic was difficult when we were influenced by so many amazing devices, but knowing that no team members had a craftsman background we knew we needed a design we could actually build. Most of our trouble came with building the larger pieces of wood and supports. Our project was top heavy and the damaged wood provided little forgiveness as we extracted nails and otherwise altered the wood. Another problem we often faced during construction were the transition periods. Often cars would catch or a marble would be too big or too little. These problems were minor and often fixed by a little innovation and sandpaper!

Stored Energy Gravitational Potential Energy Wooden Car Marbles Pulley Weights

Conclusion Overall this project idea was very interesting. We took the simple task of ringing a bell and made it a much more complicated 5 step process. Adaptation is essential when working with a group and a several step process as things will not always flow and sometimes need to be altered.