Moments after setting off an elaborate contraption that drove a nail into a piece of wood, Jalen Jackson acknowledged it would have been simpler just to use a hammer.

Jackson, 18, was one of 47 incoming University of Oklahoma freshmen who designed, built and demonstrated Rube Goldberg machines as a part of an OU summer program.

Named for American cartoonist and inventor Rube Goldberg, the machines present an unnecessarily complicated, over-engineered solution to a simple task — in this case, hammering a nail.

The machine Jackson's team built was a system of rolling marbles, falling dominoes and a catapult that launched a pingpong ball, culminating with a hammer being dropped onto a nail. The teams took nearly three weeks to design, build and test the machines — “too long,” Jackson said with a grin.