Date: Friday, Feb. 25, 2011. Location: Chicago Children’s Museum on Navy Pier. Stipend: $100 for materials and travel costs.

2011 Argonne National Laboratory’s 16th annual Rube Goldberg machine contest

Argonne National Laboratory will sponsor 12 Chicago-area high schools in a Rube Goldberg machine contest to be held at the Chicago Children’s Museum on Friday, Feb. 25, 2011. The 2010 task is to build a complicated machine that takes at least 20 steps to water a plant. Sign-up soon to be one of the 12 participating high schools.

Rube Goldberg Machine Contests bring Goldberg’s cartoons to life in a way that pulls students away from traditional ways of looking at problems and sends them spinning into the intuitive, chaotic realm of imagination. The resulting inventions are collections of bits and pieces, parts of now useless machines, scraped together to achieve an innovative, imaginative, yet somehow logical contraption to conquer the job at hand. The contest shows us all the need for simplicity and the pitfalls of complexity.

The 2011 task: To build a complicated machine that takes at least 20 steps to water a plant.

More information: Full information packets, including rules and entry applications will be mailed to Chicago-area high schools before the end of November 2011. If you want to be sure your school receives an information package, please click the “Receive info ” link below and send us the following information, all of which is required:

• Name of faculty advisor
• School name
• School address

Receive info packet for Argonne’s 16th annual Rube Goldberg machine contest for Chicago-area high schools.

Contest details:

• Entry address: Do not send your entry form to Argonne. Instead, send it to Rube Goldberg, Inc. The address is on the form. If you misplace the form, you can download a new one here or at the Rube Goldberg, Inc. Web site at www.rubegoldberg.com. Alternatively, you may fax your entry form to Rube Goldberg, Inc. at 203-557-4625. Be sure to indicate that you want to enter the Argonne contest.

• Entry fee: Please disregard the $300 entry fee requirement. Argonne will pay your entry fee.

• Stipend: In addition to paying each team’s entry fee, Argonne will provide each team with $100 to defray costs of materials and travel.

• Number of teams per school: Up to two teams from each school may enter Argonne’s contest.

• Entry deadline: Argonne’s contest is limited to the 12 teams on a first-come, first-served basis.

• Official rules: Please download them at the Rube Goldberg, Inc. Web site at www.rubegoldberg.com/

Check the Argonne website for more information.

Filed under: Grades 9-12, K-12 Outreach Programs

Tags: Competitions for Students, Contest