Teams square off in Rube Goldberg competition on campus

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. —High school and university students will continue a Purdue University tradition Saturday (Feb. 20) with the annual Rube Goldberg Machine Contest.

Originally started more than 60 years ago, the contest is named for Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Rube Goldberg whose drawings satirized machines and gadgets that he saw as excessive. Each year, complex multi-step machinery is created using household items to accomplish trivial tasks.

This year’s task: Open an umbrella.

The competition, hosted by the Purdue Engineering Student Council, begins at 7:30 a.m. Saturday with set-up at the Purdue Armory, 813 Third St., West Lafayette, Indiana. The contest begins at 11:30 a.m.

Jana Mudrock, a coordinator for the contest, said spectators will be able to see the “overly elaborate and wacky contraptions” up close and in action.

“The machines are designed to encourage teamwork and out-of-the-box problem-solving for students of all ages,” she said.

In addition, there will be a children’s corner with an interactive, engineering-related activity.

Four Division II (high school) teams and and seven Division III (collegiate) teams will be competing Saturday.

Of the seven teams participating in the collegiate competition, Mudrock says four are from Purdue: American Society of Mechanical Engineers Rube Goldberg Team, Purdue Society of Professional Engineers, Society of Mexican American Engineers & Scientists and the Association of Mechanical and Electrical Technologist.

The contest began in 1949 as a competition on Purdue’s campus between two engineering fraternities. It died after six years but was re-established in the early 1980s, culminating with the creation of a national Rube Goldberg Machine Contest in 1988.

The PSPE won the national contest in 2015, creating a 72-step machine for erasing a chalkboard. Purdue’s AMET team took second place. 

Writer: Brian L. Huchel, 765-494-2084, bhuchel@purdue.edu 

Sources: Jana Mudrock, 765-496-2660, jmudrock@purdue.edu