It happened while the canapé chef was attempting to explain a contraption used to snap the dome off an egg.
Susan Carnell, a research psychologist at Columbia who gave the lecture on "Twilight," did manage to slip some real science into her talk, including references to a recent study of the mating behavior of male topi antelopes and a slide depicting the vagina photoplethysmograph, a contraption used to measure female arousal.
Eggs are then judged for soundness after impact, design and creativity of the contraption used for the egg.
The team solved the first problem by hanging the entire contraption, using a thread as thin as dental floss.
Mark -- nerdy, pudgy, harried -- is shown rigging up their car, first with a sail, then a microwave contraption using huge satellite dishes, and finally a helium tank with a bulbous hose.
Mr. Connolly was very impressed when James invented a contraption, using a rain slicker and ropes, that could haul more wood out of the forest than either boy could manage on his own.
Now, computer chip-maker Intel is taking on the musicians and Rube Goldbergs of the world in one fell swoop with a robotic orchestra known as the "Intel Industrial Control in Concert". Originally debuted at the 2011 Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, the contraption uses 2,300 rubber balls launched by 36 paint ball hoppers to play a 2,372 note song.
Unveiled last week by the Austrian design and innovation firm L I V I N, the contraption uses the roots of common mushrooms to degrade plastic placed within their agar (the fungi's nutrient base), then allows humans to harvest and consume the byproduct.
Today, those constraints, as well as the contraptions used to get around them, look outdated and even surreal.
Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter, became similarly fascinated by those clunky credit-card reading contraptions, used by retailers to take a card imprint.
Like most Kennedy branches, its interior is small, with room for little more than a few tables, an old air-conditioning unit, a trash can and, behind a high counter, the heat lamps and stainless steel contraptions used to deep-fry the chicken into a greasy delicacy.
