Complexity Rules
Rube Goldberg was an engineer-turned-Pulitzer-Prize-winning cartoonist who specialized in whimsical drawings of complicated machines designed to perform the simplest of tasks. For 23 years now, the Rube Goldberg Machine contest at Purdue University has inspired high school and college teams to construct working models of the wacky machines they’ve designed.
This year, the teams were challenged to devise a contraption that could dispense a squirt of hand sanitizer. The 2010 winning high-school team came from Thorp High School, Thorp, Wisconsin, which also fielded the winning team in 2009. Team Thorp — comprising 12 seniors and two juniors — built a 137-step machine. Judges discarded some of its steps, however, so in the end the winning entry had between 65 and 70 steps — still impressively convoluted. Each machine is subjected to three runs, and only one mistake is allowed. Thorp’s got through all three error-free.
Kimberly High School, Kimberly, Wisc., came in second with a 30-step machine. Third place went to the Cornerstone Christian Homeschoolers of Urbana, Ill. Next year’s challenge: a machine that can water a plant.
Filed under: K-12 Education News
Tags: Contest, Mechanical engineering
Good Job Thorp!
Thought you might be interested in knowing that the original Guinness World Record for a Rube Goldberg Machine was set by a team of students at Monache High School in Porterville, California.
This record was set July 31, 1997. In keeping with the spirit of Rube Goldberg’s cartoons, the machine was built entirely from common objects. The machine included a phonograph, bicycle, film projector, sink, rocket, cannon, bow and arrow, toaster, blender, coffee maker, rubber chicken, etc. etc. etc. In all the machine had (according to the rules established by Guinness) 113 steps. Its function… to give 50 pennies change (one at a time) for two quarters.
In 2005, Purdue University students broke the Monache record. Two years later, a new record setting machine was built by students at Ferris State University. I believe they still hold the record.