Contest challenges teens to make it the hard way

Correction: The Rube Goldberg Machine Contest at the Carnegie Science Center's UPMC Sportsworks will be from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Friday. This information was incorrect in Thursday's edition of Ticket. Admission is $14 for adults and $10 for children, which includes general admission to the Science Center. Details: (412) 237-3400.

Have you ever played the game Mousetrap• Just about everyone in my generation has played it at least once while growing up. You have to create a giant, intricate machine that catches a mouse, using many absurd and convoluted steps.

So kids know the principles behind a Rube Goldberg machine, if not Rube Goldberg himself. Goldberg was a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist for many newspapers, who believed that there were two ways of doing something - the easy way and the hard way. And man usually prefers the hard way. His cartoons depicted primitive but complex machines built out of wheels, gears, plants, animals, birdcages, boots, balls and buckets, for tasks as simple as rocking a baby's cradle or wiping somebody's face with a napkin.

Pittsburgh-area high school students are competing this week to build the best Rube Goldberg machine, the less efficient, the better. This year's mission is to lather and shave a balloon. If it pops, your team loses points.

"It's one of our National Engineers Week programs," says Janet Henke of the Carnegie Science Center. "The purpose is to expose students to engineering, to see how much fun it is and hopefully steer them toward a technical education in the future."

There are quite a few Rube Goldberg machine contests, but almost all of them are at the college level, for engineering fraternities and such. This one is for small teams from high schools, with the slightly scaled-down goal of a minimum 10 steps for the machine, instead of the usual 20.

The winning team's members each get a Palm Pilot. Other prizes include gift certificates and behind-the-scenes technical tours of Kennywood Park.

"They [students] send in an initial drawing, then later send in two photo progress reports," Henke says. "On competition day, they come in, answer questions about their machine, and demonstrate it for the judges."

The first mission two years ago was to build a machine that selects, washes and peels an apple, in 20 steps or more - which proved to be a bit much. Last year, it was to clean, polish and buff a shoe in 10 steps or more. A team from Conemaugh Township High School won handily with a machine that was activated by a series of golf balls falling on levers, and ended with toilet brushes scrubbing the shoe.

"Their machine was very sturdily built and it worked every time," Henke says. "A lot of the machines will work one or two times, and then will start having difficulties. It consistently ran and ran well."

The contest is growing, and at least one group this year is from outside the state. "Our long-range goal is to get other high school competitions to come here to the Science Center from different states, and start a national competition," Henke says.

Next year, the mission will be to build a machine that folds a letter and puts it in an envelope.

Additional Information:

Event Info

Rube Goldberg Machine Contest

What: High school contest to build a Rube Goldberg machine.

When: 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Friday.

Admission: Free.

Where: UPMC Sportsworks, Carnegie Science Center, North Shore.

Details: (412) 237-1640