University News Service

Rube Goldberg contestants to pump hand sanitizer

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Pumping hand sanitizer is something many people do to ward off flu and other illnesses. But what if it took more than 20 steps to accomplish that task?

Dispensing the appropriate amount of sanitizer into a hand is this year's challenge for the Rube Goldberg Machine Contest. The contest, sponsored by Purdue University's Phi Chapter of Theta Tau engineering fraternity, rewards machines that most effectively combine creativity with inefficiency and complexity.

The contest's namesake is the late cartoonist Rube Goldberg, who specialized in drawing whimsical machines with complex mechanisms to perform simple tasks.

Six teams will compete in this year's local competition Feb. 20 at Purdue. The winner will move on to the national contest, which will be at Purdue on March 27.

The 28th annual local event will begin at 10:30 a.m. at the Purdue Armory. Doors open at 9:30 a.m. The event is free and open to the public and is part of Purdue's celebration of National Engineers Week.

The competition pits teams of students and their machines against each other with the goal of completing a simple task in the most complicated way possible. Teams will be judged on the complexity, creativity and ingenuity they use to design the machines and perform the task. The winning machine must complete two successful runs, and points are deducted if students have to assist the machine once it has started. Twenty steps is the minimum number required to complete the task, but most teams will use many more.

"This year's task is especially timely given the H1N1 outbreak and the medical community's urging to keep hands clean," said Keegan Klauke, Theta Tau's national contest chairman and an electrical and computer engineering major from Deerfield, Ill.

Purdue teams competing in this year's local contest are the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Society of Mexican American Engineers and Scientists, Purdue Society of Professional Engineers, Society of Women Engineers, National Society of Black Engineers, and Rubanex, an unaffiliated group.

Sponsors for this year's event are BAE Systems, BP, Lockheed Martin, Ingersoll Rand, Omega Engineering, Priio and Rockwell Collins.

A regional high school Rube Goldberg Machine Contest will be held the same day. The high school event is coordinated by the Purdue Society of Women Engineers and will begin about 12:30 p.m. while the judges of the collegiate contest are deliberating. The winning team will advance to the national high school Rube Goldberg Machine Contest, which will be the day of the national collegiate event.

Teams participating represent Kouts High School, Kouts, Ind.; Eastbrook High School, Marion, Ind.; North Vigo High School, Terre Haute, Ind.; Southside High School, Muncie, Ind.; Reavis High School, Burbank, Ill.; Spring Valley High School, French Lick, Ind.; Clinton Prairie High School, Frankfort, Ind.; Blackford High School, Hartford City, Ind.; Highland Senior High School, Anderson, Ind.; Jac-Cen-Del Junior-Senior High School, Osgood, Ind.; Centerville High School, Centerville, Ind.; Owen Valley High School, Spencer, Ind.

Rube Goldberg earned a degree in engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1904. He worked as an engineer for the city of San Francisco for less than a year before becoming a sports cartoonist for the San Francisco Chronicle. He received a Pulitzer Prize in 1948 for his political cartoons published by the New York Sun.

More information on the Rube Goldberg Machine Contest can be found at https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/rubegoldberg/index.html

Writer: Judith Barra Austin, 765-494-2432, jbaustin@purdue.edu

Sources:  Keegan Klauke, kklauke@purdue.edu
                   Blair Conner, local contest chairman,  brconner@purdue.edu
                   Karen Jatkowski, high school contest chairman, kjatkows@purdue.edu