Odds and endsWinners of the annual Rube Goldberg Machine Contests
Rube Goldberg machines combined simple household items into complex devices to perform trivial tasks; the machines combine the principles of physics and engineering, using common objects; the theme for the 2010 national Rube Goldberg contest: to build a machine which would dispense an appropriate amount of hand sanitizer in someone’s hand — and do so in at least twenty steps; a University of Texas team built a machine that dispenses the hand sanitizer in 46 steps
Rube Goldberg machine contests are inspired by Reuben Lucius Goldberg, whose cartoons combined simple household items into complex devices to perform trivial tasks. The machines combine the principles of physics and engineering, using common objects such as marbles, mousetraps, stuffed animals, electric mixers, vacuum cleaners, rubber tubes, bicycle parts, and anything else that happens to be on hand.
The competition is sponsored by the Purdue University campus chapter of Theta Tau, a professional engineering fraternity.
Who were the 2010 national winners?
A team from the University of Wisconsin-Stout won the 23rd annual Rube Goldberg Machine Contest on Saturday, 27 March at Purdue University. Wisconsin-Stout located in Menomonie, was competing in the national competition for the first time. The team’s machine was called “Valley of the Kings” and had an Egyptian theme, telling a tale of events following the death of King Tut.
Who were the 2010 regional winners?
A team from the Purdue Society of Professional Engineers on Saturday, 20 February, won the 28th annual Purdue Regional Rube Goldberg Machine Contest by focusing on the contest’s namesake.
What was the 2010 task?
The 2010 task was to build a machine which would dispense an appropriate amount of hand sanitizer in someone’s hand — and do so in at least twenty steps.
How did the contest gain national prominence?
The contest began as a rivalry between two Purdue engineering fraternities and was popular at Purdue in the 1940s and 1950s. It was revived in 1983. Since then, winners have appeared on “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” “Newton’s Apple,” “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson,” “Late Night With David Letterman,” NBC’s “Today,” CBS’s “This Morning,” CBS News, “Beyond 2000,” CNN, and ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
High school: Maine South High School wins 15th annual Rube Goldberg Machine Contest
A team from Maine South won Argonne National Laboratory’s 15th annual Rube Goldberg Machine Contest, held two weeks ago at the Chicago Children’s Museum on Navy Pier. By winning Argonne’s contest, Maine South advances to the National High School Rube Goldberg Machine Championship which was held Saturday, 27 March, at Purdue University.
Maine South defeated ten other teams by building a complex machine that takes at least twenty steps “to dispense an appropriate amount of hand sanitizer into a hand.”
Second place in the Argonne competition was won by York Community High School and third place went to Chicago Christian High School.
The People’s Choice Trophy, awarded by popular vote by people attending the Chicago Children’s Museum during the
