College Teams Compete for Glory With Gadgets

April 5, 2007 — -- How many engineers does it take to pour a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice? As it turns out, you need three engineers, a slinky, a hobby horse and about 3,000 hours of prep time.

If this sounds like an engineer joke, it's not. Ask any one of the competitors in last Saturday's 19th Annual Rube Goldberg Machine Contest held at Purdue University, and they'll tell you that this is really quite serious.

At the RGMC, inefficiency and absurd complexity are not just the norm, they are celebrated. Entrants in this year's competition were charged with peeling an orange, juicing it and pouring at least one teaspoon of juice into a cup using a minimum of 20 steps.

The contraptions are limited in size to 5 feet by 6 feet by 6 feet, and can't contain any live animals, open flames or explosives. The teams must then complete two successful runs, making juice in this year's case, and are judged on a point system for the creative use of materials, theme, team chemistry and flow of the machine.

The 2007 RGMC's winning invention, created by Ferris State University's toy-loving trio, incorporated an eye-popping 345 steps from peel to pour -- breaking the Purdue Society of Professional Engineer's previous record, as well as the Guinness Book of Records' 125 steps.

"It's really fun," said Ferris State senior James Travis III. "It has a lot of steps, it's complex. … Our goal for this year was to beat the record with 300 steps and, by the time we were done, we actually had 345."

But that extensive process could have proved disastrous, according to one competitor. "With added steps come added risk," said Kyle Keppner, a freshman from Purdue University. "One more step is one more chance of failure."

'Nail-Biter'

So how did Ferris State manage to oust four-time winner Purdue? Well, it all came down to child's play.

Made up entirely of American-made toys, the Bulldog's contraption all started with the ring of bell.

The bell then triggered a line of cars that traveled down a chute and up a Jacob's ladder, causing dominoes to fall and start the train, which choo-chooed down a set of tracks causing a hobby horse to drop. After the horse dropped, a mixture of Diet Coke and Mentos mints exploded and hit a target, thus setting the final squeeze and pour in motion.

"It was a nail-biter," said Ferris State senior Tom Sybrandy. "At the end of the day, you have three chances for two perfect runs. After the first run's success, we let out a huge sigh of relief. We had set the world record, and we had that off our chest."

Not surprisingly, the competition's namesake, Rube Goldberg, was not your typical inventor. A Pulitzer-Prize winning cartoonist, Goldberg, who'd majored in engineering at the University of California at Berkeley, spent most of his life lampooning the human tendency to choose the hard way of doing something over the easy way. He even described his work as "symbols of man's capacity for exerting maximum effort to accomplish minimal results."

In 1914, when he was 31 years old, Goldberg began designing contraptions to perform mundane tasks, such as peeling an apple, sharpening a pencil or pouring a glass of juice in as many steps as possible. In 1988, more than 70 years after his first invention, the brothers of the Phi Chapter of Theta Tau fraternity at Purdue University launched the first national RGMC in his honor. Since then, the contest has continued to grow, this year attracting nine teams from schools across the country and 1,500 fans.

Favorites Overturned

The Purdue Society of Professional Engineers, this year's second-place finisher, created a secret agent themed machine with 155 steps to complete the task. The Boilermakers were this year's competition favorite. The virtual Yankees of the Rube Goldberg competition, Purdue has walked away with RGMC's top honor four years running.

Purdue freshman Zach Umperovitch said it went "really well" and he was "happy" with their finish, but he'd hoped the hard work and preparation would have yielded a victory.

"I'm disappointed we got second place, who wouldn't be," he said. " We put 500 hours into this machine. I stayed over spring break, Christmas break -- I was working on the machine. It's almost like taking another class, a bigger shop class. Because, honestly, you do put in the hours like you do in class with this. You do learn a lot with this."

According to Ferris State senior Sybrandy, this year's win is just the first in a long line of RGMC appearances. "I feel we have to carry on the tradition at Ferris of winning and having a winning team."

Regardless of who wins, all these teams would make Rube Goldberg proud.