Engineering Extravaganza 2010: Rube Goldberg Competition
Once again, Gaudior students came together to create exciting and innovative Rube Goldberg machines. Each student became an engineer as they attempted to include at least 5 of the 7 Simple Machines - screw, lever, pulley, wedge, inclined plane, wheel & axle, and gears - within their design. Rube Goldberg was a cartoonist who was best known for his illustrations of complicated, multi-staged devices designed to perform simple tasks. The challenge for our students was to build a Rube Goldberg contraption designed to ring a call bell. Working in teams, students designed and constructed numerous varieties of machines, all out of simple, household objects.
Students displayed and demonstrated their creations during our Engineering Extravaganza evening. In the lower levels, parents and other family members were asked to challenge students in a series of races; each building a machine and seeing which could ring the bell faster. In the upper levels, students competed against one another in a series of challenges, fastest run, slowest run, and loudest ringing of the bell.
Our students showed us, that night, the extent to which they can be innovative problem solvers. Our parents did as well. The ability to think differently, to solve problems in new and maybe unexpected ways, is what our students will need to achieve and to succeed in this highly technological world. Gaudior strives to teach students how to think, take pride in their work, and give them to the tools to become the great innovators of the future.
Rube Goldberg was a Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist, sculptor, and author. A Rube Goldberg contraption - a machine that takes a very simple task and makes it extraordinarily complicated - is full of elaborate sets of arms, wheels, gears, household items, even live animals! Click on the images below to see larger versions of some of Rube's famous "inventions".
