Making Toast, Rube Goldberg Style!

Every morning for breakfast, I make myself a classic peanut butter toast with a banana and a cup of milk. A few days ago, I woke up a little late and had to rush through my morning routine, missing spots on my toast and spilling milk in the process. I thought, how could I avoid this in the future in the event my alarm clock runs out of batteries again? Wake up earlier? Of course not! Set another alarm? Nonsense! A Rube Goldberg machine to speed up my morning was the obvious solution of course. In this Instructable, I'm going to walk through how I was able to streamline my breakfast using a complex string of simple machines made out of things I found in my own kitchen, and how you could make one too!

To make your own Rube-Goldberg-inspired breakfast machine, you will need:

1. String
2. Painters tape
3. A few large square objects for big dominoes
4. Assorted spice and condiment bottles
5. A heavy can
6. 2 Round fruits or heavy balls
7. Dominoes
8. Wooden building planks
9. A couple of books
10. A long roll of tinfoil, parchment, or gift wrap
11. A heavy exercise weight
12. Patience, lots of patience

The machine starts as I grab a banana. There is a string tied around the stem of the banana, which is yanked as I take the banana out of the basket. The string is looped through a series of pulleys which I made out of tape by connecting two pieces of tape together by the sticky ends to make two smooth sides and then taping that piece to the wall. This ensures that the string does not encounter too much friction from the tape. The string is looped around one of my dad's antique signs and into the next portion.

The other end of the string is tied to the neck of a spice bottle, which hangs in place when the banana is in the basket. As I pull on the banana, the string lifts the spice bottle up along the wall. After rising about eight inches, the spice bottle knocks the yellow ball off of the cinnamon bottle, falling onto the track below made of wooden building planks.

As the ball falls and rolls down the wooden ramp, it lands in a measuring cup. The cup is set with a Rubik's cube on the handle, and as the ball weighs down one side, the measuring cup falls back and tips the cube forward and off the party cup.

What would a Rube Goldberg machine be without dominoes? The falling Rubik's cube knocks over the first domino, causing a chain reaction. At the end of the domino track, I added "dominoes" made out of a deck of playing cards tilted on one side and a CD in its case propped up on a wood plank. Because the dominoes increase in mass, they are able to deliver more force. The CD is knocked over at the end, which then activates the tinfoil swivel in the next piece.

As the CD knocks into one side, the other is sent in the opposite direction and hits into the powdered coffee jar. Because the tinfoil roll has some decent weight to it, the coffee jar has a bunch of energy ready for the next stage.

The coffee jar rolls down along the spines of two propped-up books after being hit by the tinfoil roll. It drops off the end of the books, and with that final bit of momentum knocks a can of tuna with a string tied around it off the table. When the can falls, it yanks on the string with a lot of force, opening the lidded jar in the next step.

This was probably the hardest piece to get working. As the tuna can falls and yanks on the string, the lid of the jar is pulled open. Inside is an orange, which rolls out of the jar because it is ever so slightly tilted downwards. The orange rolls through the jar and onto two pieces of straw taped to the underside of the lid which act as a track. The orange rolls off the straw-track and onto the wooden ramp below.

A great Rube Goldberg machine wouldn't be complete without a good old-fashioned plank ramp either. This one is made out of pine building blocks that I got for a birthday a while ago. Orange rolls down the ramp following the curves as it goes, and makes it's way down to the final stage of the machine.

After leaving the ramp with significant momentum, the orange smacks into a small wooden box that the dominoes came in, which acts like a domino itself. It falls onto the five-pound weight, standing on its side next to the toaster. For some reason, my family's toaster has a lever that takes a ridiculous amount of strength to push down. To create the forces required, the five-pound weight falls over and delivers a good share of gravitational energy to the handle. To give the stubby handle a place for the weight to fall on, I taped two wooden planks to either side, giving plenty of room for the weight to land. I also later added a spice jar under the lever so the weight doesn't break the planks off when the lever hits the bottom.

And that's it! Perfect toast every time, and I didn't even have to walk all the way over there to press down the lever! Sure it did take me a while to set it all up, but over time I think it will make up for it with all the time savings I'll have. Now to just explain to my mom what all this stuff is doing on the kitchen table...

Thank's for reading!