The Annual Rube Goldberg Contest —

Students See the Triumphs And Disappointments in Competition

By Jeff White

The annual Rube Goldberg project is as much about disappointment as it is about triumph.

I learned this truth firsthand in the spring of 1993. I was a sophomore at Newtown High School, and the Discovery Program, which at that time was still at the high school, put on its annual contest in honor of the late cartoonist Rueben Goldberg. Mr Goldberg loved to create characters that designed complex contraptions to perform simple feats.

My team was set to follow in his footsteps. We were ready to build the best mousetrap ever. For weeks we were holed up in my basement, methodically working out the details of the 15 steps the project was required to have. We tested it, time and time again. Perfect each time. Through every trial run, it never once failed. We thought the project was a shoe-in.

That is, until the judges were watching.

As the crowd encircled our contraption on contest day, and the judges took their positions at the front, Chris blew into his makeshift dart gun (a hollowed-out Bic pen) that was to pop a balloon and start the golf ball rolling. The balloon popped. The ball stood still. As that uneasy fidget of disappointment came over the crowd, we nudged the golf ball into a roll, and watched as the rest of the contraption performed flawlessly. That one human intervention cost our team first place.

Yes, second was still great, but tell that to a team poised to triumph.

I was reminded of the disappointment I felt that spring day as I watched this year’s eighth grade discovery students compete in the Rube Goldberg contest last Thursday afternoon. My heart went out to Rylan McCollum.

On all accounts, Rylan’s entry this year was bold and incredibly complex, involving ascending dominoes, electric pulleys, and engines meant to take up rope slack and dump 10 items into a time capsule. Trouble was, as parents, students, and the judges looked on, the project just didn’t work. During the project’s transportation from Rylan’s home (where he worked on it for 20 hours) to school, some key connections became loose, and the project wasn’t the same. The major problems were the batteries. “They were dead,” he explained. “It’s very embarrassing.”

Yet Rylan had to say he enjoyed creating the project. For a long time he has been the kind of student who relishes building things, putting things together and making them work. It was that kind of ingenuity that lead to an A+ mark in his tech education class. And as onlookers poured out heartfelt applause for a good try, Rylan looked beyond his disappointment and smiled.

These types of mixed emotions were manifested in almost every competing team Thursday afternoon, as project steps malfunctioned, balls didn’t stay on course and mousetraps didn’t spring when weighted. But the applause was the same, and the smiles were wide as students balanced their pride with their disappointment as assuredly as their projects balanced dominoes.

The goal of this year’s Rube Goldberg contest was to have teams determine what they felt were the 10 most important inventions of the last century. Taking these 10 inventions, students had to deliver them into a time capsule through a minimum of 15 steps.

The materials employed hadn’t changed much from seven years ago. Dominoes, race cars and race car track, large milk jugs filled with water, Legos, mousetraps, all the material used by students had to conform to two standard rules: teams had to use household items and could not spend over $20.

“It was pretty spontaneous, random,” explained David Bunger of how his team came to create “Duracell Battery Park,” their contraption that was meant to honor the battery company who long has been a regular sponsor of the event. “We just gathered material. We didn’t have a plan.” Although things went wrong for David’s team during the first trial in front of the judges, a few quick corrections caused the contraption to work flawlessly the second time through. Duracell Battery Park was good enough for second place and $50.

Tyler Wood, Matt Barackman and Dan Letson also used the time in between their first and second trials to make some corrections and alterations on their project, which took on a theme of “Winter Sports.” As a skier was towed along a motor-driven rope, which eventually triggered a canister filled with snow-colored confetti, the three eighth graders let out a simultaneous “Yes!” that their project didn’t have a hitch the second time around. “Winter Sports” took third place, and $25.

“It was fun,” Dan Letson said of the Rube Goldberg project, “because you got to make stuff, and watching it work was great.”

John White, who did not win a prize, also thought highly of the competition. His project, built entirely out of wood, might have lacked the colorful eccentricities of other groups, but more than made up for it in ingenuity. Among the contraption’s many steps, a magnet was removed, releasing baking soda into a pool of vinegar inside a balloon, with the resulting gas filling the balloon large enough to start another step of the project. “I used just the basic law of gravity,” he said of his project’s primary material.

In the end, four girls who love board games took home the competition’s grand prize, $100. Carolen Brennan, Caitlin Weber, Alex Heifer and Kristen Landolfi, like most every group, had difficulties with their contraption “Games” during the first run-through. Many of the project’s steps were related to specific board games that the girls used to play when they were young. The project ran much more smoothly the second time through, and that, along with the group’s colorful presentation and complex use of materials, was enough to be judged the competition’s best.

“We didn’t have any expectation,” said Carolen Brennan. “We were happy with our project, but didn’t know what other [projects] looked like.”

The four girls went on to talk about the tensions that the competition created as they worked together for nine hours at a time trying to perfect their contraption. On the competition’s eve, the project still didn’t work all the way through, and the girls were becoming frustrated with it, and with one another. That all changed Thursday, as the they were forced to put their heads together after the project’s initial mishaps to make sure it ran perfectly the second time. It did, thanks to teamwork.

Which is the other truth of the annual Rube Goldberg competition I was reminded of as I watched teams deal with disappointment and malfunctioning projects, only to see them turn around and make their projects work. Those many complex steps that were on display that afternoon, meant to accomplish the same goal, were the results of groups of students working together.

Watching these students hold their breaths as their projects entered into critical, dicey sections, I was reminded that both the disappointment and triumph this competition yields is all because students put so much of their time, energy, creativity and hope into each project. Each team watched as each project, which started as an idea and a drawing, was put to the test.

One comment from a parent seemed perfect. He simply mused, with a laugh, “Makes you want to be a kid again, doesn’t it?”