The Rube Goldberg Machine Contest brings the ideas of Pulitzer Prize-winning artist Rube Goldberg's "Invention" cartoons to life. Named after, and inspired by the cartoonist Reuben Lucius Goldberg, this Olympics of Complexity is designed to pull students away from conventional problem-solving and push them into the endless chaos of imagination and intuitive thought. To be specific, groups are given an elementary challenge: something as simple as peeling an apple, sharpening a pencil, or putting toothpaste on a toothbrush. But instead of just "solving" the problem, students have to make the solution as complicated and as convoluted as possible. In fact, the more steps - there's a minimum of twenty - the better the Rube Goldberg Machine. And what a machine! An assemblage of ordinary objects, mechanical gadgets, and the oddest odds and ends are linked together and somehow get to the desired goal.

¶ 10:29 PM