Built to fail: Heather Knight's Rube Goldberg infatuation

Emily Spivack ( Bio  /   Posts )  |  Tuesday, January 25, 2011 UTC

An element of chance and an air of tension draw Heather Knight and her colleagues at Syyn Labs to construct Rube Goldberg contraptions. PopTech followed Knight to get her take on the Rube Goldberg machine they created, mainly from knick-knacks found in antique shops around Camden, ME, to kick off PopTech 2010. And with bated breath, we watched the apparatus come to life – with a little help from some friends.

Syyn Labs, which Knight co-founded with six others in 2008, got its big break when they masterminded the Rube Goldberg device for OK Go’s music video, This Too Shall Pass. Since then, as profiled in Fast Company, the likes of Google, Disney, The Colbert Report, and Sears have come knocking, hiring the team to dream up more quirky projects and bringing greater visibility to this DIY collective.

But for Knight, who is working towards her PhD in Robotics at Carnegie Mellon, it all comes back to telling stories in an entertaining way, whether through engineered mousetraps or robotic theater. “I love using technology, whether it’s mechanical or electrical or interactive to capture an audience’s imagination.”

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Comments

Gravatar Name: Mariah Trentacosti

Heather,

I’m a middle school math teacher, and we are in the process of our first Rube Goldberg Project. The task is to get a stamp on an envelope in 20 or more steps. My Algebra class is in its 3rd day of working on the project, and I’ve got three girls already in tears. I decided to show your video to my class on Friday, and they really liked how you said " Rube Goldberg Projects, by nature, are not really supposed to work." I believe it gave them the confidence and the sense of relief they need to move forward. We’ll be following you and others. Great Job!

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