Rube Goldberg contraptions — like the one in OK Go’s “This Too Shall Pass” video and Purdue University’s world record holding one — are undeniably awesome. Don’t even try to deny it; we’ve heard trying it will cause diseases normally found only in walruses. Speaking of walruses, Discovery channel has greenlighted a new series from walrus-impersonator Jamie Hyneman and Gollum-impersonator Adam Savage of Mythbusters.

Unchained Reaction will challenge two teams to compete to build an “elaborate chain reaction contraption on a massive scale” over the course of five days, starting with the same tools and materials and sticking with a specific theme. The teams will be from many backgrounds (“artists, rocket scientists, animatronic specialists, engineers and even your average Joes”), and their final “chain reaction contraption” will be judged by Savage and Hyneman along with a different guest judge each week. The Discovery Channel commented, “refined mechanical movements, pyrotechnics and large-scale destruction are encouraged.” Hell yeah they are. Oh, they meant the show.

The six-part series will premiere on Discovery Channel this March. As for why it’s called Unchained Reaction instead of something invoking Rube Goldberg, some people might think that the term “Rube Goldberg machine” is already in the public domain, but that is, in fact, a myth:

[Image credits: Geekfeed, QuickLOL]

Peter Kokis of Brooklyn RobotWorks* builds exoskeletal costumes of famous robots and prop weapons out of regular household items, recycled plastic containers, hardware, pet supplies, sporting goods, and other relatively cheap stuff repurposed and repainted to make something awesome. He tells us the Terminator exoskeleton above even included parts from a toilet. I’ll refrain from saying, “This costume is the sh-t!” except for just now when I said it anyway.

That Terminator took about 300 hours to construct and weighs 120 pounds, Kokis says. He builds costumes and props to order and makes appearances at private or corporate parties, promotions, and special events, not just as the Terminator, but also as one of three Autobots from The Transformers: Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, and Ironhide. His upcoming designs* include the Xenomorph from Alien and an Iron Man suit.

Several pictures of his four exoskeletal costumes are after the break. Slideshow, roll out.

[All images courtesy of Peter Kokis*.]

* Warning: music autoplays at link.

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VIDEO BELOW: Ruger the 2 year old Australian Cattle Dog gets in another scooter race.

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Jörg Sprave of The Slingshot Channel is back with another slingshot, a pump action crossbow. It shoots 20mm steel balls and can hold twenty balls at the same time (like your mom). It can grab a new ball with one very quick move of the hand (like your mom). The video below shows Sprave smashing glass bottles with this ultra-convenient slingshot. He’s also got a new intro and outro for his clips, which includes the scene pictured above for some reason.

Sprave says this repeating slingshot crossbow is the fastest shooter he’s built yet. It can fire the next shot faster than his machete slingshot, Gatling gun slingshot, 6-shot slingshot, circular saw blade launcher, musket ball crossbow, zombie decapitator, and slingshot cannon. That was merely an excuse to link to a bunch of our posts. We’re just simple folk trying to make a buck (like your mom).

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Paul McKinnon and his team at Evolution Motorsport broke the land speed record for the fastest sofa during a run at Camden Airport in Sydney, Australia, last week. Their top speed of 163km/h [101 mph] broke the previous Guinness World Record of 148km/h [92 mph] held by Englishman Marek Turowsk since 2008. You gonna let Australia upstage your motorized sofas, England? Start connecting motey-motes to sit-abouts immediately. (We assume this is what they call motors and couches over there, right Governor?)

Australia’s leather two-seater, with handy coffee table (complete with cup of coffee and bowl of fruit), was built by designers Evolution Motorsport. It is powered by a Suzuki GSX 1400 motorcycle engine. Project leader Paul McKinnon said the challenge was not just making sure it was fast, but that it could battle the aerodynamic challenge of pushing a squared-off piece of furniture at that speed. [Herald Sun]

They used the coffee table to help break the airflow, and the bowl of fruit is for (we assume) nutrition on the go, which is totally important you guys. The motorized couch was built for Parmalat Australia’s “Add a Motor to It” promotion, which led to some confusion when we tried to add motors to some kangaroos and then told the police Parmalat put us up to it.

Two videos of the record-breaking run are below. Now that the land speed record for a couch has been updated, somebody needs to break the water speed record (if one exists) likely set by these dudes.

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Silent, an electronics hobbyist in Poland, hacked a couple floppy drives to play The Imperial March, as seen in the first video after the jump. Although this isn’t the first time this has been done (see: all the other videos after the jump), it is the best floppy drive version of The Imperial March I’ve heard. He plans on making an orchestra with some old 5.25″ and 8″ drives next.

Here’s how it’s done:

Floppy drives have a stepper motor. Stepped rotation causes vibration, which is audible. By controlling how many steps are taken per second, you can control how many sound waves per second are generated. A microcontroller can speak to the floppy drive in order to do this if you flash it with a program. You feed note pitches and durations into this microcontroller, perhaps by converting a MIDI file. [Reddit]

Oh, so that’s how that works. One time I put a floppy disk with a Limp Bizkit song on it into my computer’s floppy drive, and I could have sworn the stepper motor said, “Oh f–k you.” But now I know that was just a coincidence. Right?

[Sources: Nerdcore, Reddit, TheDailyWhat]

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