Honda Cog Commercial Uphill Tire Roll Trick - Rube Goldberg

A simple little video, illustrating how to do the uphill tire roll trick, as seen in the Honda "Cog" commercial.

As long as the weights are heavy enough, they will propel the wheel forward and upward a half-revolution once they are knocked out of balance. The toughest part of setting this up is just balancing the tire with the weight at the top. You can cheat by putting a block behind the tire, so it can't roll back. You can also add a small bump in front of the tire, so it'll only roll forward if enough force is applied to knock the tire forward.

Sorry for the poor quality. I put it together on a friend's old 900MHz laptop, using ol' Illustrator 7, during my lunch break. The bum wouldn't get back to work, till I showed him how the trick worked.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• rube goldberg
• honda
• commercial
• cog
• uphill
• tire
• roll
• animation
• how to
• guide
• trick
• WebRidesTV
• making
• counterweight

[Thinatrez]

lol to the guy who looked on wikipedia. anyone could have written that. if you're going to "source" something, you need a link

[Staack117]

@Thinatrez Yeah, it's good advice to take Wikipedia entries with a grain of salt, but - to be fair - the Wikipedia entry for "Cog (advertisement)" is pretty well sourced, with 78 external citations covering the bulk of the article. Numerous credible news outlets, industry publications, and production bits all confirm the veracity of the production team's claims.

[tangential100]

That video was all obviously fake! Those people were all definately CGI or in those green skeleton things!

[Staack117]

@tangential100 Wizards may, or may not, have been involved, too...

[deathtocountry1]

how did they do the silencer roll part. . it seems like it rolls unbelievably far

[Staack117]

@deathtocountry1 They did augment the muffler to even the weight out a bit, so it would go a little further. They probably also improved the finish, so there were no uneven spots on the outside.

[amitlu89]

Nice work. =)

Thanks for explaining it. I too was a little puzzled at the way the tire behaved, but didn't really think that much into it.

Your explanation makes perfect sense.

[deanj2001]

@deathtocountry1 They filmed in 2 separate 60 second segments and then cropped the two together. At the very end of one segment the muffler would have been losing momentum whilst the second segment would begin just after the muffler had been given momentum.

Source: wikipedia.

[Staack117]

@sparkybaz77 I can't speak on their specific incline, but we were able to do this exact bit in our High School physics class, on a fairly-similar incline. Did we, along with the 3 other MSI judged Rube Goldberg assemblies I've seen this trick used on, somehow defy the laws of physics? If so, totally I want some kind of award!

[MoonEyes2k]

@sparkybaz77 A weight, on a lever? And, you base this on...? The distance, the surface the tires roll on, and the incline, quite clearly all are sufficient for this to work quite well.

[gjsmo]

People... just because you don't get it doesn't mean it's fake.

[magicalzombie720]

Physics!!

[banddude121]

@reinux I have had to debate with about 5 people on it and most wont reply back after i say there are weights lol

[TheSlim901]

@reinux There's a lot of people on the internet who are complete idiots...