March 3, 2015
After many hours of hard work and dedication, the UT Austin chapter of Sigma Gamma Tau (national aerospace engineering honor society) took first place in the 2015 regional Rube Goldberg Machine Contest (RGMC). The contest was held on The University of Texas at Austin campus February 14 and was open to the public.
The RGMC is an annual international event that challenges its competitors to create elaborate and complicated machines that must accomplish a simple task. The idea was inspired by Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Rube Goldberg, who “created” wonderfully complicated machines that undertake everyday tasks. The machine must work as a cause and effect mechanism, one step triggering the next in order to complete the task. This year the competitors were assigned to find the most creative and complicated way to erase a chalkboard.
This was the first time in several years that the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics participated in Rube Goldberg. SGT, having taken first place, automatically qualifies for nationals, which will be held on March 28 in Columbus, Ohio. If SGT does decide to attend, the group said that in order to prepare, they are going to improve their machine by adding more levels and platforms.
A STEM friendly competition, both the team and their machine are judged on complexity, reliability, team chemistry, creativity, humor, storytelling and successful achievement.
“A major portion of the points you get are how many steps you have – that is the complexity part of the competition,” said Kellen Wall, aerospace major and member of SGT. “The more steps you have, up to 75, the better.” Wall said they had 31 steps going into the competition.
“The first stages when we were designing we started off pretty optimistic time-wise. And we got a lot of pretty good ideas going out and had a fun brainstorming session,” Wall said.
Materials used to build the machine included LEGOS, Hot Wheels cars and trucks, plywood, marbles, pinball tracks and balls, a golf ball, string, a plastic cup, pieces of cardboard, Lincoln Logs, some Jenga pieces, a chalkboard and an eraser.
Luis Martinez, aerospace major and SGT pledge officer, said that in order to create their machine they would look at videos in order to generate new ideas. He said the design and building process started last semester, in which they faced a few challenges.
“Being able to agree on one thing as a group has been hard. I think that is one of the most challenging things when you’re working as a team – everyone being able to see how one person’s idea will play a role into the entire thing,” Martinez said.
Martinez said that the best thing about working on the project was getting to know other students.
“When you get to hang out a lot together, through the fun times and the not so fun times, we’ve all become closer. I think that is always a good thing to have, like friends and people that you can rely on,” he said.
The group members also left learning new lessons that they can apply in their future careers, both as students and eventually as working engineers.
“I learned that there is a lot of trial and error in engineering. And when you put something together for the first time it’s probably not going to work, and you’re going to have to go through several iterations to get something that you are happy with,” said Hallie Ford, aerospace major and president of SGT.
