Three Purdue teams compete for Rube Goldberg championship

Purdue’s Association of Mechanical and Electronic Technologists team sets up its Rube Goldberg machine in Purdue University Armory on February 22. The team won the regional competition that day and competes for the national championship in Columbus, Ohio, on Feb. 9. (Purdue University photo/Mark Simon) Download Photo

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Purdue University is sending an unprecedented three teams to the 2016 Rube Goldberg Machine Contest national championship on Saturday (April 9) in Columbus, Ohio.

Defending national champion Purdue Society of Professional Engineers holds the Guinness world record for most complex machine and has won five of the last 11 championships. The Purdue American Society of Mechanical Engineers team won three of the previous six championships.

The Purdue delegation is led by the Purdue Polytechnic Institute’s Association of Mechanical and Electrical Technologists team, which won first place in the 2016 Purdue regionals with a rainforest theme featuring a particularly tricky golf shot. Purdue AMET finished second at nationals last year, making Purdue the only university to ever claim the top two spots at the national competition.

Each team is required to build a complex machine that uses as many entertaining steps as possible to accomplish a simple everyday task in the whimsical spirit of the drawings of acclaimed cartoonist Rube Goldberg, whose work famously inspired the game “Mouse Trap.” This year’s task is to open an umbrella.

Purdue will provide competition reports and visuals from the competition on social media. Past national champion machines including PSPE’s world-record machine can be seen on Purdue University’s YouTube Channel, which includes a Rube Goldberg playlist.

Two Purdue engineering fraternities staged the Rube Goldberg machine competition as an annual grudge match for several years in the 1950s. Purdue engineering students relaunched the Rube Goldberg Machine Contest as an annual national intercollegiate competition in 1988.

Writer: Jim Schenke, 7656-237-7296, jschenke@purdue.edu  

Related Web sites:

Purdue YouTube https://www.youtube.com/user/PurdueUniversity

Purdue YouTube Rube Goldberg playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4310E7970E48D90B

Purdue AMET: https://www.facebook.com/AMETPurdue/

Purdue SPE: http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~pe/

Purdue ASME: http://www.purdueasme.com/#!committees/cejf

Purdue SPE world record machine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdPDn1KUz_A 

VIDEO CAPTION: The Purdue Polytechnic Institute’s Association of Mechanical and Electrical Technologists’ team hopes to build on its 2015 second-place finish with its 2016 machine that has already topped last year’s national champions in regional competition.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6R_Q-MEgIqM). 

Note to Journalists: Broadcast-quality video of this year’s Purdue Rube machines can be seen at and downloaded from http://bit.ly/1quG365. Purdue media relations specialist Jim Schenke will be with the teams in Ohio to provide new video, photos, and information in that folder for media use. Schenke can be reached at 765-237-7296 and jschenke@purdue.edu. He can connect journalists to competitors.