Traveling to Japan to break a world record on tele­vi­sion is no sim­ple task, but the mem­bers of Ferris’ Rube Goldberg team have been asked to do just that.

The Rube Goldberg team at Ferris, win­ners of the national com­pe­ti­tion in 2007, was recently invited to present a new machine on a Japanese game show in an attempt to re-set their own world record.

The team, who left Jan. 3 for Tokyo and return­ing Jan. 16, will be pre­sent­ing the machine that has not been used in com­pe­ti­tion before with addi­tional steps to com­plete the task.

A Rube Goldberg machine is meant to per­form a sim­ple task in as many steps as pos­si­ble. In 2007, the Ferris team accom­plished a record 345 steps to squeeze an orange into a pitcher.

“I am not quite sure how many steps we will achieve. It depends on how many we can build in such a short time frame,” said team mem­ber and elec­tri­cal engi­neer­ing tech­nol­ogy major Michael Dunakin of the new machine being con­structed. Dunakin was also a mem­ber of the team in 2007.

Those going on the trip include Kyle Hebner, an elec­tri­cal engi­neer­ing tech­nol­ogy major, Bryan Williams, a mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing tech­nol­ogy major, Dunakin and Professor Tom Hollen.

Dunakin also said that he is excited for the trip, and feels that this is a dif­fer­ent type of excite­ment and expe­ri­ence than win­ning the national title.