| RELATED INFO |
| * Rube Goldberg Contest at Purdue |
| VIDEO |
| * Video from the 2007 national contest (4 minutes 15 seconds) |
January 24, 2008
Students to play chef for a day at Rube Goldberg contest
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - |
The 26th annual event will take place at 10:30 a.m. Feb. 23 at the Purdue Armory, with the winner moving on to the April 5 national competition, which also will be at Purdue.
Doors will open at 9:30 a.m. The contest, sponsored by Phi Chapter of Theta Tau fraternity, is free and open to the public and is part of Purdue's celebration of National Engineers Week.
For this year's competition, the task is to assemble a hamburger consisting of no less than one precooked meat patty, two vegetables and two condiments, sandwiched between two bun halves.Purdue teams competing in this year's regional contest are the National Society of Black Engineers, the Purdue Society of Professional Engineers and the Society of Women Engineers, American Society of Mechanical Engineers and a Society of Mechanical Engineers team from the College of Technology at New Albany.
"It will be a great competition this year, and we are expecting a large crowd," said Ben Parsons, a junior in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering from Saint Charles, Mo., and Theta Tau's regional contest chairman. "Rube is a longstanding tradition at Purdue, and this year's task should be extra entertaining."
More than 1,500 people attended last year's regional contest.
Parsons said like last year, student contestants are encouraged to bring their resumes to the event. The resumes will be given to judges and sponsors.
"It's a great way for students to network and connect with potential employers," he said.
The Indiana High School Rube Goldberg Machine Contest will follow the Purdue regional competition awards ceremony. The high school event is being coordinated by the Purdue Society of Women Engineers and will begin at 2 p.m. The winning team will advance to the National High School Rube Goldberg Machine Contest, which will be held for the first time at Purdue on April 5 following the national collegiate event.
"We will also have food vendors on site, so families can turn this into an entire day of fun," Parsons said.
Indiana high school teams participating in the event include Waldron Junior/Senior High School, Waldron, Ind.; Brandywide High School, Niles, Mich.; Newburgh Christian School, Newburgh, Ind.; Rochester Community High School, Rochester, Ind.; Kouts High School, Kouts, Ind.; Roncalli High School, Indianapolis; South Putnam High School, Greencastle, Ind.; Saint Theodore Guerin High School, Noblesville, Ind.; Eastbrook High School, Marion, Ind.; Richmond High School, Richmond, Ind.; Anderson High School, Anderson, Ind.; and Park Tudor High School, Indianapolis.
The competition pits teams of students and their machines against each other with the goal of completing simple tasks in the most complicated ways possible. Teams will be judged by the complexity, creativity and ingenuity they use to design the machines and perform the task. The winning machines 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.
Last year, the Purdue Society of Professional Engineers continued its streak, winning for the regional for the third year in a row and claiming the People's Choice award for the second consecutive year. The team used 134 steps to squeeze the juice from an orange and then pour the juice into a glass.
Sponsors for this year's event are Omega Engineering Inc. of Stamford, Conn., BAE Systems, Bosch Group Inc., Daimler-Chrysler Corp., Fluor Corp., General Electric Co., Kimberly-Clark Corp., Lockheed Martin Corp., Rockwell Collins Inc. and Priio. Purdue's College of Engineering and College of Technology also support the event.
The competition pays homage to the late cartoonist Rube Goldberg, who specialized in drawing whimsical machines with complex mechanisms to perform simple tasks. 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.
In past years, teams in the national competition have included Purdue, the University of Texas at Austin, Hofstra University, Ohio State University, the University of Toledo and George Washington University. This year marks the 20th national contest.
In previous contests, students' machines have been required to select, clean and peel an apple; make a cup of coffee; toast a piece of bread; put a stamp on an envelope; and drop a penny into a piggy bank. Winners have appeared on television shows internationally, including CBS' "This Morning," ABC's "Good Morning America," NBC's "Today," "Newton's Apple," "Ripley's Believe it or Not," the Fox News Network and CNN. Purdue's national competition winning teams from the past two years have been featured on "Jimmy Kimmel Live."
Writer: Kim Medaris, (765) 494-6998, kmedaris@purdue.edu
Sources: Ben Parsons, (314) 517-8984, bsparson@purdue.edu
Mike Mierzwa, Theta Tau's national contest co-chairman, (201) 563-5071, mmierzwa@purdue.edu
Nick Kissel, Theta Tau's national contest co-chairman, (812) 736-9175, nkissel@purdue.edu
Crystal Langenbrunner, Purdue Society of Women Engineers, (260) 579-1680, clangenb@purdue.edu
Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; purduenews@purdue.edu
PHOTO CAPTION:
Purdue students, from left, Michael Stumpf, Greg Bauman and Drew Wischer celebrate the winning run of their machine during last year's regional Rube Goldberg Machine Contest. Their team, the Society of Professional Engineers, claimed its third consecutive regional competition win with a machine that used 134 steps to squeeze juice from an orange into a pitcher and then pour the juice into a glass. (Purdue News Service file photo/David Umberger)
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