Fremd High School wins state championship Rube Goldberg contest

ARGONNE, Ill. (April 7, 2003) — A team of students from William Fremd High School has won the state championship Rube Goldberg machine contest, held April 5 at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

The contest is sponsord by the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Illinois Engineering Research Council.

The eight-member Fremd team defeated five other Illinois high schools by building the wackiest machine to select and crush an empty 12-oz. aluminum soft drink can and move it into a recycling bin. The machine had to complete its task in 20 or more steps. Team members are Jon Congdon, Jeff Hodal, Greg Rosen, Tim Shurtz, Alan Wegrzyn, John Wieser, Peter Witkowski and Eric Zipper. Their faculty advisors are John Malecki and James Hojnacki.

Second place in the state contest went to Chicago's Morgan Park Academy. Minooka Community High School took third place.

Other high schools in the contest were Cary-Grove High School, Cary, Ill., Homewood-Flossmoor High School, Homewood, Ill., and Milford High School, Milford, Ill.

The first place team won the Argonne Science Award and a $600 donation to it's school's science program. The second place team received a $400 donation to the school science program, and the third place team received a $300 donation. Second- and third-place teams also received plaques. The remaining three schools each received a $200 donation to their science programs. The money was provided by Argonne and the University of Illinois Engineering Council.

Schools qualified to participate in the state championship contest by placing in the top three spots in two contests held earlier this year, one sponsored by Argonne in collaboration with Chicago Children's Museum, and the second held at the engineering open house at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

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.

"Rube Goldberg" is a registered trademark of Rube Goldberg, Inc., which can be reached by fax at (212) 371-3761, by e-mail at mfwolfe@compuserv.com, or on the World Wide Web at www.rube-goldberg.com/.

The nation’s first national laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory conducts basic and applied scientific research across a wide spectrum of disciplines, ranging from high-energy physics to climatology and biotechnology. Since 1990, Argonne has worked with more than 600 companies and numerous federal agencies and other organizations to help advance America's scientific leadership and prepare the nation for the future. Argonne is operated by the University of Chicago as part of the U.S. Department of Energy's national laboratory system.

For more information, please contact Steve McGregor (630/252-5580 or media@anl.gov) at Argonne.