A Whistling Good Idea

Rahul Raghavan

“Nivi! Turn the cooker off after three whistles, okay?” Ma says.
Ma is going to the market to buy vegetables for dinner.

Nivi makes a face.
THUMP! She puts her book down.
PWFFT! She sticks her tongue out at the cooker.

Nivi taps her foot on
the floor.
She waits and waits for
the whistle to blow.

All of a sudden, she has an idea!

Nivi picks up the rolling pin and places it close to the gas knob.
She arranges a row of tomatoes and potatoes behind it.

The rasam-and-dal ladle is next.
Nivi places it carefully on the edge of the shelf above the cooker.

She then makes five of Nani’s spoons stand up.
These are the ones Nani uses to sip her watery khichdi.

Finally, Nivi places her favourite plastic ball right above the spout of the pressure cooker.

WHOOSH! The ball moves
a little.
WHOOSH! A little more.
WHOOSH! The ball rolls down the third time.
Nivi jumps, claps, and whistles herself!

The ball hits the spoons.
The spoons fall on the ladle.
The ladle swings off the shelf. BLOOONG!

The ladle hits the potatoes.
The potatoes roll into the tomatoes.
The tomatoes crash into the rolling pin.
The rolling pin hits the knob of the stove. THAAD!

The knob turns. The stove switches off.
Nivi opens the pressure cooker carefully.
Inside it is yummy, perfectly cooked rice.

Nivi goes back to reading her book happily.

Build Your Own Genius Machine
Nivi builds a type of machine called the Rube Goldberg machine. This is a machine that works on the principle of cause and effect. This is what happens when you hit a coin with a striker on the carrom board and it, in turn, smashes into another, causing the second coin to land in a pocket!
In a Rube Goldberg machine, a series of objects that carry out simple tasks work together to meet a common goal in a very complex way. Sure, it’s simpler to do things the easy way, but building a machine to do them is more fun.

Try your hand at building your own Rube Goldberg
machine to drop a teaspoon. Here’s how.
You will need:
1 thin book rolled up as a cylinder, 2 smooth long sticks for a slope,
2 thick books, 2 rulers, 1 marker, 1 eraser, 1 ball,
3 notebooks, 1 light plastic jar, a bundle of string, 1 teaspoon,
1 vessel, 1 smooth beam

Roll the cylinder down the slope.
The cylinder hits two books, placed standing up.
They fall on the ruler, which is balanced on the marker.
This, in turn, taps the ball.
The ball hits the three notebooks.
They land on the end of the second ruler, balanced on the eraser.
The jar, placed on the other end of the ruler, is attached to the piece of string.
The string is looped around the smooth beam above.
The free end of the string is tied to the spoon.
The jar rises when the third notebook falls on the ruler.
The string falls down, dropping the spoon into the vessel.