The Final Project: Rube Goldberg Machine

Credit for project idea: Joyce Tang

The final project is something you can get started on at any time. You will be building a Rube Goldberg machine, named after cartoonist Rube Goldberg. You can use any objects that are available in Alice to do the job. Here are the things that must be present in your program to receive full credit.

Final Project Core Requirements

1. At least one Do together that contains at least two Do in orders
2. At least one use of If/else
3. At least one definite Loop
4. At least one While loop
5. At least one For all in order
6. At least one For all together
7. At least one Wait
8. At least three different camera angles from which to view the machine
9. At least one keyboard event
10. At least one mouse click event
11. At least one function
12. At least four methods of your own creation
13. At least one move, one turn, and one roll
14. At least one use of a set vehicle to method

If you are trying to make sense of this all on the first day of class, it may feel like a daunting task. But you will learn how to do all of these things quickly enough that you will have plenty of time to do a cool project without feeling time pressure as long as you use your time wisely!

Here is a tremendous advertisement to demonstrate what a Rube Goldberg machine is like. Here is another one for making a delicious lunch.

One of the best Rube Goldberg machines is in a music video where the song is pretty good, too!

Here is a sample Rube Goldberg machine in an Alice world. Note that it does have most of the things on the list. It is here to give you a sense of the spirit of things. (And, no, you don't need to hit a bird with a tennis ball.)

Don't worry! You are not expected to do anything quite so fancy in your animation! But if you do want to make something really fancy, that would be cool!