Ever since he was a child, mechanical engineering junior Steven Price has had a knack for making things move.
“When I was a kid I was always playing with marble tracks, building blocks, Hot Wheels, things like that and then I kind of just decided to combine them all together and see what kind of creative things that I could do with them all,” Price said.
As it turned out, there were plenty of creative things for Price to do later on in life. His talents in what he calls chain reaction art took Price all the way to the quarterfinals of America’s Got Talent in 2013.
His final performance on America’s Got Talent was of a Rube Goldberg machine that created a chain reaction of dominoes and soccer balls and ended in a fireworks display.
Rube Goldberg is the name given to these mechanisms that use a complex process to complete a simple task, and comes from a 1920s artist of the same name who completed drawings of machines similar to the ones that Price and his colleagues build.
Following his time on America’s Got Talent, Price returned to MSU but did not abandon his passion for chain reaction art. He is organizing an event this summer in which he, along with a team of more than 15 other chain reaction artists from across the United States, will create a large scale chain reaction and set it off in front of a live audience.
The reaction will also be filmed and put on YouTube.
“The record we are looking to break is the most dominoes toppled in America ... and that was set back in 1979 and then we’re also trying to break the world record for the most steps on a Rube Goldberg machine,” said Price.
The event is also being used as a way to promote science, technology, engineering and mathematics education and hopefully to inspire children to pursue these subjects.
Price and his colleagues recently set up a Kickstarter to help fund their event, which will take place in Wayne, Michigan, sometime this summer.
They are aiming to raise $7,000 to cover everything from the transportation of the materials to the booking of a warehouse in which to build the machine. The money will also go toward paying to transport more than 15 builders from across the country to participate in the event.
“There is a community of domino builders and chain reaction artists on YouTube and it’s a lot more popular in European countries ... they host large events every single year,” Price said. “But for the American builders there are a lot fewer and more spread-apart builders so we’ve never had the chance to host a huge event like this and we’ve always wanted to do something like this for years.”
