Why you need not be intimidated by the laws of nature.
4/28/2003
Think of this site not as a tribute to Rube Goldberg, but rather as an invitation to sharpen your own thinking about how things work—or should. Here you will find descriptions of some of the most famous over-engineered, impractical, or just plain undoable machines through history. Included in the lineup are plans for perpetual motion machines, reverse osmosis, Escher's Waterfall, capillary wheels, and free energy. They have one thing in common: they don't work. The fun for engineers, science teachers, and the intellectually curious is to explain why the devices fail to perform as advertised. The site also includes an art gallery of visual illusions.