A veteran of the TV show Battlebots, Jamie Price has built plenty of destructive machines. But late last year, he designed a robot with a more mellow calling: offering cold beer and cocktails. The result — a masterpiece of plywood, plastic, aluminum and electric motors called Bar2D2 — serves up everything but the sage advice.

Ladies and gentlemen, for your consideration -- a real-life Rube Goldberg machine! As you may or may not be aware, Rube Goldberg was an early 20th century cartoonist (and engineer). His cartoons depicted imaginary machines capable of performing ordinary tasks in an extremely complicated way. Here in these modern times, we see the Rube Goldberg legacy in the children's game called "Mousetrap." In the educational arena, the building of Rube Goldberg machines has become a popular project in high school and college physics classes, and for hobbyists dabbling in this whimsical genre. Why? Because these contraptions beautifully illustrate a number of fundamental physics principles.

Now that's a neat little trick. Once again that characteristically Japanese sense of humor gives us an opportunity to glimpse some interesting physics in an entertaining venue. Of course we aren't too surprised to see a water skier plane over the water, or to see a rock skipping esthetically across a placid pond. However, a water slide entry propelling someone into an "unaided" skid across a swimming pool seems a more rare and special event -- even though the physical principles are the same.