The student team from the Purdue Society of Professional Engineers is once again national champions after winning the Rube Goldberg Machine Contest Saturday (April 12) in Columbus, Ohio.
The teams were required to build an overly elaborate machine that whimsically performed an uncomplicated everyday task - this year to zip a zipper. The Purdue machine ran through its 100 steps flawlessly, but wowed the crowd with a stunt that had never been attempted since Purdue student engineers launched the competition in 1983 - including a human in the machine. The machine zipped a zipper worn by a team member squeezed into the six-foot cube with machinery that performed a variety of other getting-ready-for-the-day tasks such as making toast and tea and applying a quick, "I’m-running-late" "French” bath. You can see the machine here http://youtu.be/XA477DjENZ8
PSPE-built Rube machines have won no less than four national titles and set no fewer than three Guinness World Records for building fabulously complicated machines that ran unassisted through upwards of 300 steps in less than 90 seconds.
This year the team scaled back to create a more whimsical machine that included some very obvious nods to cartoonist Goldberg’s designs, such as falling hammers and a bowling ball. With that focus, the team also won the Legacy Award for "Rube-iest" machine. More than 3,500 total hours went in to building the machine. One modern but bizarre sequence included a “Sharknado”-like airborne attack on soldiers and tanks that was identified as a live-action “historical” depiction of the "The Great Shark War of 1852."
"If nothing else, the Rube Goldberg contest proves that engineers can be creative and have fun," said Purdue team president Adam Bahrainwala of Palatine, Ill. "It may not be our reputation, but they are valuable life and career traits."
Other team members included David Cannon of Valparaiso, Ind., Andrew Rawlins of Greenwood, Ind., Jordan Vallejo of Los Angeles, Ben Hilker of Edwardsville, Ill., Rebecca Russell of Elkhorn, Wisc.