Students test their engineering skills at Rube Goldberg state championship

ARGONNE, Ill. (March 27, 2006) — Illinois high school students will put their engineering skills to the test Saturday, April 8, at the eighth annual Illinois State Championship Rube Goldberg Machine Contest, sponsored jointly by the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Student teams have built machines that take at least 20 steps 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 teams will face off for state bragging rights at the contest, which is held at the Chicago Children's Museum at Navy Pier. The contest will begin at 11 a.m.

Competing schools are:

• Danville High School, Danville
• William Fremd High School, Palatine
• Hardin County High School, Elizabethtown
• Maine Township South, Park Ridge
• University High School, Normal
• Wilmington High School, Wilmington

The winning team will receive the Argonne Science Award, and $600 will be donated to the school's science program. The second-place team will receive a presentation certificate and a $400 donation to the school's science program. The third-place team will receive a presentation certificate and a $300 donation to the school's science program. Fourth- through sixth-place teams will recieve a $200 donation to their schools' science programs.

The top two teams will have the opportunity to compete in the third annual National Championship Rube Goldberg Machine Contest for High Schools to be held Friday, April 28, at the Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, Wisc.

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.

Argonne's Division of Educational Programs and Communications and Public Affairs Division sponsor the championship event in collaboration with the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, the 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, or on the World Wide Web at www.rgmc.com.

Chicago Children's Museum's mission is to create a community where play and learning connect. For more information about Chicago Children's Museum, call (312) 527-1000 or visit www.chichildrensmuseum.org.

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

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.