Maine South High School wins 15th annual Rube Goldberg Machine Contest

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ARGONNE, Ill. (March 15, 2010) — A team from Maine South won Argonne National Laboratory’s 15th annual Rube Goldberg Machine Contest, held Friday at the Chicago Children’s Museum on Navy Pier. By winning Argonne's contest, Maine South advances to the National High School Rube Goldberg Machine Championship to be held Saturday, March 27, at Purdue University.

Maine South defeated 10 other teams by building a complex machine that takes at least 20 steps "to dispense an appropriate amount of hand sanitizer into a hand."

Second place in today’s competition was won by York Community High School and third place went to Chicago Christian High School.

The People's Choice Trophy, awarded by popular vote by people attending the Chicago Children's Museum during the contest, went to Maine South.

In addition to advancing to the national championship, the winning team received a traveling trophy to display until the 2010 contest and a tour of Argonne, which will include theAdvanced Photon Sourceand lunch with Argonne scientists. The first-place team also will have the opportunity to demonstrate its winning machine at Argonne on the day of its tour. In addition, each team member and the team's faculty advisor received an Argonne National Laboratory Rube Goldberg Machine laptop backpack and an Argonne Rube Goldberg Machine Contest T-shirt.

Second-place team members and their faculty advisor received Argonne National Laboratory Rube Goldberg Machine laptop backpacks and Argonne Rube Goldberg Machine Contest T-shirts.

Third-place team members and their faculty advisor received Argonne National Laboratory Rube Goldberg Machine Contest T-shirts.

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.

Information about the Argonne Rube Goldberg Machine Contest for High Schools is availableonline.

Argonne’sDivision of Educational Programsand Communications and Public Affairs Division sponsored the March 12 event in collaboration withChicago Children’s Museumand theNational Rube Goldberg Machine Contest, held annually atPurdue University. The event is licensed by Rube Goldberg, Inc.

“Rube Goldberg” is a registered trademark and copyright of Rube Goldberg, Inc., which can be reached, at (203) 227-0818, by e-mail atRube@RubeGoldberg.comor via theirWeb site.

Chicago Children’s Museum’s mission is to create a community where play and learning connect. For more information about Chicago Children’s Museum, call (312) 527-1000 or visit theirWeb site.

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 byUChicago Argonne, LLCfor theU.S. Department of Energy'sOffice of Science.

For more information, please contact Brock Cooper (630/252-5565 ormedia@anl.gov) at Argonne.

Follow Argonne on Twitter athttp://twitter.com/argonne.

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