Purdue Team Wins Rube Goldberg Contest

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

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A team from Purdue University won the collegiate division of the Rube Goldberg Machine Contest on the Purdue campus last weekend. The university’s Association of Mechanical and Electrical Technologists was the national runner-up last year.

The goal of the competition was to create a complex machine to complete a simple task, which this year was opening an umbrella. The AMET team will join its six competitors in the national competition on April 9 in Columbus, Ohio.

In the high school division, Kouts High School in Kouts, Indiana won and will move on to the national competition on April 23 in Pewaukee, Wisconsin. 

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.