Contest Encourages Cunning Complexity

After a temporary hiatus, the Newtown Middle School’s Rube Goldberg Machine Contest is back.

The contest brings the ideas of Pulitzer Prize-winning artist Rube Goldberg’s “Invention” cartoons to life. Named after, and inspired by, the cartoonist, this Olympics of Complexity is designed to pull students away from the conventional problem solving and push them into the endless chaos of imagination and intuitive thought.

Groups are given an elementary challenge, but instead of just “solving” the problem, students have to make the solution as complicated and as convoluted as possible. In fact, the more steps — there is a minimum of 15 for the middle school competition — the better the Rube Goldberg Machine, an assemblage of  ordinary objects, mechanical gadgets, and the oddest odds and ends are linked together to get to the desired goal.

The challenge for 2006 is to tear or crumple one sheet of 8.5-by-11-inch, 20 lb paper and place it in a receptacle in 15 or more steps. The contest, originally geared toward college engineering students, has been modified from the national challenge to accommodate the middle school student.

Each group of four, comprised of at least one GATES student, will be paired with a professional mentor to guide it through the design phase of the project. The competition, sponsored by Tier One Machining of Newtown, will take place in the middle school cafeteria on Wednesday, May 24 from 6 to 8 pm.

For additional information, contact Ms Gans at gansp@newtown.k12.ct.us.