Cue the Looney Tunes Music — Record for World's Most Complex Rube Goldberg Machine Broken

I love a good Rube Goldberg machine. Forget curing cancer or probing the mysteries of the universe, if I were a scientist I’d spend all my time trying to recreate the house from Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure.

Well, a couple days ago a team of engineers at Purdue University did Looney Tunes proud by creating the most complex Rube Goldberg machine in history. This model of inefficiency goes through 300 steps to inflate and pop a balloon.

You can check out a video of the world-record holding machine after the jump…

I love the part where the shutters burst open revealing the machine is more complex and colorful than it initially appeared. Who says there’s no room in science/engineering for showmanship?

via io9

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