Weeks has talent

MHS grad Christian Weeks recently made his national television debut on ‘America’s Got Talent’

Three Minnesota men recently showed they have talent -- and smarts. Marshall High School graduate Christian Weeks, now of Northfield, and his associates Jason Engbrecht and Bryce Danielson created a Rube Goldberg machine, which was showcased on NBC TV's "America's Got Talent" show July 10. To watch, go to youtube.com and search "hamster wheel agt."

Weeks is the son of the Rev. David and Michon Weeks, formerly of Marshall.

Weeks, now a cabinet maker at Frost Cabinets Furniture & Design in St. Paul, first made Rube Goldberg machines while attending St. Olaf College in Northfield. Weeks, a physics major, and Danielson were students in Engbrecht's physics class.

St. Olaf teams led by Engbrecht won the national collegiate Rube Goldberg competition in 2009 and 2012. Weeks was a member of the team in 2011.

"We were on two different teams," said Weeks, but Engbrecht put Danielson and Weeks together on subsequent projects.

The national collegiate competitions attracted the attention of Japanese game show organizers. They invited Engbrecht, Danielson and Weeks to compete against Japanese Rube Goldberg champions on a Japanese game show.

A Rube Goldberg machine is a machine intentionally designed to perform a simple task in an indirect and complicated fashion. Goldberg, who lived from 1880-1970, is best known for a series of popular cartoons depicting complicated gadgets that perform simple tasks in convoluted ways.

Their Rube Goldbergian skills brought the group, who call themselves "Hamster Wheel," to Japan.

"We built one in five days," Weeks said. "It was a world experts versus Japanese experts."

Next, the guys built a machine for Target showcasing their products.

"In 2013 I think, we built a machine for a Target commercial," Weeks said. "It turned out really well."

The group also built a machine for 3M which was launching a rebranding promotion. They also did live performances for 3M and had it filmed which resulted in a much-seen video, about a million views. The video can be seen by searching "3m brand machine" on youtube.com. The video came to the attention of "America's Got Talent" TV show, which contacted Hamster Wheel.

"That was pretty wild," said Weeks. "It's a standing joke -- every two, three years we get asked to make one of these things."

They were told that 10 million people watch an "AGT" episode.

Weeks said for the "AGT" appearance, there is less physics applied to this machine -- "it was more mechanical" -- because they just had one shot to get it right.

"We were short on time and this was less risky," he said.

At one point though, the machine, which was built just for the show and took 300 hours of nights and weekends to build, uses a double pendulum effect which knocks over a wine glass.

"It goes forward and backward and energy gets transferred," Weeks said.

Before the machine was started, Judge Simon Cowell asked what could go wrong? Engbrecht replied, "anything and everything."

On "America's Got Talent," three out of four judges -- Cowell, Mel B and Howie Mandel -- voted Hamster Wheel to the next round of the show.

Weeks, Engbrecht and Danielson recently appeared on KARE-11 TV.

Weeks told the interviewer they had "a lot of fun" filming the show and "hanging out in L.A."