The brachistochrone problem posed by Bernoulli and its solutionhighlights one of the most famous experiments in physicswhich illustrates the variational principle. This pedagogicalstudy is designed to ignite a classroom discussion on the variationalproblem. We overview the Euler–Lagrange formalismof the variational principle and obtain the solution to thebrachistochrone problem. We demonstrate the success of thevariationalmethod using brachistochronemodels which werefabricated specially for this purpose.