Purdue Competing For Rube Goldberg Championship

Last year's contest featured machines designed to open an umbrella. (Image courtesy of Purdue University)

Three teams from Purdue University will attempt to take home the 2016 Rube Goldberg Machine Contest national championship. The teams include the defending national champions, the Purdue Society of Professional Engineers, which holds the Guinness world record for the most complex machine.

The group has also won five of the last 11 championships. Last year’s runner-up, the Purdue Polytechnic Institute’s Association of Mechanical and Electrical Technologists won the 2016 Purdue regionals in February.

The Rube Goldberg Machine Contest requires each team to build a complex machine with as many steps as possible to accomplish a simple, every day task. This year’s task is to open an umbrella.

The national championship takes place Saturday in Columbus, Ohio.

The Rube Goldberg Machine Contest was started over 60 years ago as a competition between two engineering fraternities. It was re-established in the 1980s, with the national competition being created in 1988.

You can view the winning machine from the 2016 Purdue regional below: