Rube Goldberg (Physics Project)

I built this for an end-of the year project in AP Physics. The project requirement was to get a golf ball that enters at a fixed height on one side of the box to exit at the same height on the opposite side of the box. It had to take exactly sixty seconds, utilize a certain number of energy transformations, etc. The entire project is controlled by an ATMega328 (hidden in the lower back left corner). Almost every element is an input to or an output from the ATMega. Some code on the ATMega tracked the elapsed time, and if any of the processes had run quicker or slower than they were supposed to, the ATMega would compensate by adjusting the rate at which the golf ball was lifted in the last step. For redundant precision, a pair of vending machine solenoids at the very end released the ball at exactly 60 seconds. (In this video I hadn't yet fine-tuned the code, so it takes a little less). Built and programmed by Bob Rudolph Painted by Brendan Pease