Summary
OK Go's most famous video: a two-story Rube Goldberg machine that fills a warehouse and plays out in one continuous take, perfectly timed to the song. Balls roll, dominoes fall, and one action triggers the next in a long chain of simple machines. The anchor video for the Sandbox's cause-and-effect and energy lessons.
Viewer safety
All ages
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Teaching resources
Discussion questions
Discussion
A Rube Goldberg machine does a simple job in the most wonderfully complicated way.
- Pick one moment in the machine — what pushed or pulled the next thing to make it move?
- Where do you see energy being passed from one object to another?
- Why do you think the whole machine had to be filmed in a single take with no cuts?
Quick work-a-long
Vocabulary: chain reaction, energy transfer, simple machine, sequence.
Try it: Sketch a three-step chain reaction that ends by ringing a bell. Label what pushes or pulls at each step.