The $532 million, 59,000-member Zeal Credit Union has sponsored an attempt to get the largest Rube Goldberg machine ever into the Guinness Book of World Records.
The late Rube Goldberg, a Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist for newspapers in both San Francisco and New York, drew roughly 50,000 cartoons during his career, many depicting zany machines that relied on chain reactions to accomplish some goal (as illustrated above), according to Rube Goldberg, Inc., an educational not-for-profit organization formed to further science education through Goldberg's work.
The Zeal Credit Union Incredible Science Machine will deploy more than a half million objects, both dominoes and other common household items, across 5,000 square feet at the Michigan Science Center in Detroit, according to a joint press release from the credit union and science institution. Project leader Steve Price, a student at Michigan State University, will launch the machine around 3:00 p.m. on July 18, the release said, anticipating it would take about 30 minutes for the entire reaction to complete.
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"When we originally heard about this attempt to break the record, we believed it fell directly in line with one of our guiding principles at the credit union, following your passion," Zeal Vice President Lisa Fawcett said. "We knew we needed to support these builders in any way we could. As the credit union for hard working Americans, Zeal understands the hard work and passion required to pursue a dream of this magnitude and we are just happy we could be part of it."
The Livonia, Mich.-based credit union reported that 15 builders from around the world would build the machine during the week of July 13-18.
"We can't think of a more appropriate place to carry out this attempt at a Guinness World Record," Michigan Science Center president/CEO Tonya Matthews said. "As the science, technology, engineering and math hub of Michigan, we are consistently looking for unique opportunities to bring in bright minds that will spark an interest in this great field and we hope this chain reaction leaves a lasting impression."
The release said a team from Purdue Society of Professional Engineers held the current world record, set in 2012, for the largest Rube Goldberg chain reaction machine. That machine relied on the successful completion of 300 separate steps and took around two minutes to complete, the release added.
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