Goldberg (1883-1970) imagined how ordinary objects might do extraordinary things. He channeled his ideas into comics, and along the way, the name Rube Goldberg became an adjective: \u201cdoing something simple in a very complicated way that is not necessary.\u201d Take Goldberg’s comic “Professor Butts and the Self-Operating Napkin\u201d\u2014a man takes a spoonful of soup, which triggers a catapult that eventually leads to a scythe cutting a string, allowing a napkin to wipe the man\u2019s mouth. Thimmesh\u2019s narrative encapsulates this over-the-top spirit. Her opening two spreads, hilariously illustrated by McCloskey, offer brilliantly convoluted suggestions for reading this book. A biographical section on Goldberg follows, along with several spreads examining the ways contemporary people have built three-dimensional Goldberg contraptions. Having connected the past to the present, Thimmesh makes a more important point: \u201cBeneath the whimsy lies the science.\u201d Six simple machines that come up in Goldberg\u2019s comics\u2014the lever, the wheel and axle, the inclined plane, the wedge, the screw, and the pulley\u2014each get their own page of explanation and comic treatment. Guidance on building a Rube Goldberg machine is followed by amusing, thoughtful tips. Balancing humor, creativity, and science, Thimmesh has crafted a work Goldberg himself would approve of. McCloskey\u2019s exuberant cartoon illustrations make the science easy to grasp; human characters vary in skin tone.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Goldberg (1883-1970) imagined how ordinary objects might do extraordinary things. He channeled his ideas into comics, and along the way, the name Rube Goldberg became an adjective: \u201cdoing something simple in a very complicated way that is not necessary.\u201d Take Goldberg’s comic “Professor Butts and the Self-Operating Napkin\u201d\u2014a man takes a spoonful of soup, which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":2798,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2797"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2797\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}