William Fremd H.S. wins Argonne's 11th annual Rube Goldberg Machine Contest

ARGONNE, Ill. (Feb. 24, 2006) — A team from William Fremd High School in Palatine today won Argonne National Laboratory's 11th annual Rube Goldberg Machine Contest held at Chicago Children's Museum on Navy Pier.

The six-member team defeated seven other Chicago-area high schools by building a complex machine to cut or shred into strips five sheets of 8 ½ by 11, 20-lb. paper individually with a shredder and place the shredded paper in a recycle bin. The machine had to complete its task in 20 or more steps.

Winning team members are Scott Bezek, Ricky Chelminski, Alex Gumz, Molly Hranicka, Joe Olsen and John Wieser. Faculty advisors are John Malecki and Frank Goznikar.

Second place in today's competition was won by Maine Township High School, Park Ridge, and third place went to Wilmington High School, Wilmington.

The People's Choice Award, chosen by popular vote by people attending the Chicago Children's Museum during the contest, also went to Wilmington High School. The team received a trophy.

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.

Other teams in the contest were:

• Evergreen Park. Comm. H.S., Evergreen Park
• Minooka Comm. H.S., Minooka
• Glenbrook South H.S., Glenview
• Alan B. Shepard H.S., Palos Heights
• Trinity H.S., River Forest

The winning team received a traveling trophy to display until the 2007 contest and will take a tour of Argonne at a later date. The tour will include the Advanced Photon Source, and lunch with Argonne scientists. In addition, each team member and the team's faculty advisor received an Argonne National Laboratory Rube Goldberg Machine wrist watch and an Argonne Rube Goldberg Machine Contest T-shirt.

The first-place team will also have the opportunity to demonstrate its winning machine at Argonne National Laboratory on the day of its tour.

Second-place team members and their faculty advisor received Argonne National Laboratory Rube Goldberg Machine wrist watches 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.

The top three teams in Argonne's contest advance to the 2006 Illinois State Championship to be held Saturday, April 8, at the Chicago Children's Museum at Navy Pier. They will compete against the top three teams from an affiliated contest held Friday, March 10, at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

The top two teams in the Illinois State Championship will advance to the second annual National High School Championship contest to be held April 28, at the Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, Wisc.

Argonne's Division of Educational Programs and Communications and Public Affairs Division sponsor the February event in collaboration with Chicago Children's Museum, and the National Rube Goldberg Machine Contest, held annually at Purdue University. The event is licensed by Rube Goldberg, Inc.

"Rube Goldberg" is a registered trademark of Rube Goldberg, Inc., which can be reached by fax at (212) 371-3761, by e-mail at license@rubegoldberg.com or information@rubegoldberg.com.

Chicago Children's Museum's mission is to create a community where play and learning connect.

Argonne National Laboratory brings the world's brightest scientists and engineers together to find exciting and creative new 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 by UChicago Argonne, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science.

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