Maine South H.S. takes top honors in Illinois Rube Goldberg Machine competition

ARGONNE, Ill. (April 8, 2006) — A team of students from Maine Township South High School, Park Ridge, today won the 8th annual Illinois Rube Goldberg Machine Contest, sponsored jointly by the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The six-member team defeated four other Illinois high schools in the competition at the Chicago Children's Museum on Navy Pier by building a complex machine to cut or shred into strips five sheets of 8 ½ by 11, 20-lb. paper individually with a shredder and place the shredded paper in a recycle bin. The machine had to complete its task in 20 or more steps.

The Maine South entry was titled “A Night at the Movies,” and featured tributes to recent films in its winning device.

Second place in today's competition was won by Wilmington High School, Wilmington, and third place went to William Fremd High School, Palatine.

The statewide competition also included teams from Danville High School, Danville, and Hardin County High School, Elizabethtown.

The winning team receives the Illinois championship trophy, and $600 to support the school's science program. The second-place team receives a presentation certificate and a $400 to support the school's science program. The third-place team receives a presentation certificate and a $300 donation to the school's science program. The remaining teams receive a $200 donations to their schools' science programs.

Rube Goldberg machine contests are inspired by Reuben Lucius Goldberg, whose cartoons combined simple household items into complex devices to perform trivial tasks. The machines combine the principles of physics and engineering, using common objects such as marbles, mousetraps, stuffed animals, electric mixers, vacuum cleaners, rubber tubes, bicycle parts and anything else that happens to be on hand.

By finishing first and second in the Illinois State Championship, Maine South and Wilmington advance to the thrid annual National High School Championship contest April 28, at the Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, Wisc.

Argonne's Division of Educational Programs and Communications and Public Affairs Division sponsor the championship event in collaboration with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Chicago Children's Museum, and the National Rube Goldberg Machine Contest, held annually at Purdue University. The event is licensed by Rube Goldberg, Inc.

"Rube Goldberg" is a registered trademark of Rube Goldberg, Inc., which can be reached by fax at (212) 371-3761, by e-mail at license@rubegoldberg.com or information@rubegoldberg.com, or on the World Wide Web at www.rgmc.com.

For more information, please contact Steve McGregor (630/252-5580 or media@anl.gov) at Argonne.

Argonne National Laboratory seeks solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology. The nation's first national laboratory, Argonne conducts leading-edge basic and applied scientific research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne researchers work closely with researchers from hundreds of companies, universities, and federal, state and municipal agencies to help them solve their specific problems, advance America 's scientific leadership and prepare the nation for a better future. With employees from more than 60 nations, Argonne is managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science.