U of I Places Second at Rube Goldberg Contest

By Marcus Gilmer in News on Mar 29, 2009 3:45PM

James Kryger of Illinois keeps an eye on the progress of his teams Rube Goldberg Machine during competition at Purdue University on Saturday, March 28, 2009. The University of Illinois team won second place. (Purdue Marketing and Media photo/Andrew Hancock)

The University of Illinois took second place at this year's national Rube Goldberg Machine Contest, held at Purdue University. The team had previously won the regional competition with their "Scene of the Crime" machine based on the board game Clue (pictured above). According to the contest's website:

The contest's namesake is the late cartoonist Rube Goldberg, who specialized in drawing whimsical machines with complex mechanisms to perform simple tasks.

This year's task was to replace an incandescent light bulb with a more energy-efficient, light-emitting design. The machine must take at least 20 steps, and points are deducted if a team must intervene to help the machine complete its task. Teams are given three chances to complete two successful runs.

But while the University of Illinois took second place, the champion team from St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota had a local connection: Tom Hildreth, a junior in physics and math from Wheaton. According to Hildreth, the St. Olaf team had spent over 3,000 hours since September working on their machine. We totally dig this stuff so congrats all the way around. Below, find a video from the U of I's regional triumph, courtesy of the University of Purdue. [story via Chicago Breaking News]