Van Antwerp Middle School's team — “The Pie's the Limit” — took the title in the College's 2004
Rube Goldberg competition on Saturday, April 24.
Their machine was judged the best at removing a small pie
from a box, placing it on a plate and topping it with a dollop of whipped
cream.
A team from Questar III, which
called itself “Mass Construction,” placed second.
There was a two-way tie for third between Questar III's “Team Kobra” and Niskayuna
High School's “TEC Club.”
The teams were among the dozen who competed in the contest. Now in its fourth year at Union, the “Olympics of complexity and redundancy” was sponsored by Union's Engineering program, Knolls Atomic Power Lab, GE Elfun Society, and the Schenectady Museum.
GE employees served as judges.
The contest director is James
Hedrick, professor of engineering at Union. “The
Rube Goldberg contest, quite simply, makes engineering fun,” Hedrick said.
“Students will have the opportunity to put their creativity to work and design wild contraptions to perform what is usually a very
simple task. The only limits on machine design are their own imaginations. It's
a great way for students to showcase their design talents and inspire an
interest in engineering at the same time.”
In past years, the tasks have
included sticking a stamp on a letter, sharpening a pencil, making a baloney
sandwich, and opening a bag of M&Ms and putting toothpaste on a toothbrush.
The contest pays tribute to Rube
Goldberg, an engineer and cartoonist whose works appeared in thousands of
newspapers from 1914 to 1964. His inventions, he said, symbolized “man's
capacity for exerting maximum effort to accomplish minimal results.” His
name has become eponymous for anything that is unnecessarily complex,
cumbersome, or convoluted.
For more details, visit http://engineering.union.edu/me_dept/rube/