Events
It’s All About Inventions for Engineering Students
RALEIGH, N.C. (April 25, 2015) -Wake Tech students faced off today in a “Rube Goldberg” engineering competition on Main Campus. The challenge: Design and build a machine to perform a simple task in a not-so-simple way.
The competitors are students in an Introduction to Engineering class (EGR 150) who worked in teams to assemble their machines. Each machine was required to pop a balloon in a process with at least five steps, and each step must use the physics of gravity, mechanics, sound waves, light or electricity.
The competition is named after the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist (and engineer) Rube Goldberg, whose work depicts elaborate contraptions of levers, pulleys, wheels and gears completing simple, everyday tasks.
The winners are:
First Place:
- Alexander Askew
- Daniel Braun
- Brandon Cook
- Ryan Faggins
- Cameron Whitley
Second Place:
- Riley Downs
- Jacob Krauza
- Matt Smith
- Facinet Sylla
Third Place:
- Katie Haney
- Man Ho
- Hau Liu
The Rube Goldberg competition is one of eight projects that must be completed by students in Wake Tech’s Intro to Engineering course. The contest is a team-building experience that helps students learn how physics is integrated into engineering. The students are working toward the Associate in Science Engineering (pre-major) degree and planning to transfer to four-year institutions for further study.
