Students enrolled in the enrichment program at Smethport Area
Junior-Senior High School captured a special award for Best Use of
Gravity at the Rube Goldberg Machine Contest last week at the UPMC
Science Works in Pittsburgh.
Members of the winning team were Reba Anderson, a junior, and
freshmen Kari Rinaman, Alex Chadwick, and Kaleb Markert. Also
assisting were Alex Alfieri. Bobbi MItchell, and Kayla Carr.
Advisers were Jovanna Porter, enrichment teacher, Chris Swanson,
physics teacher, and Rob Daggett, co-owner of Smethport Specialty
Co.
Held during National Engineers Week, the contest was open to
freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors and fosters an interest
in engineering by having students invent a machine which performs a
certain simple task, which in the case of the contest, was to
design a machine that puts toothpaste on a toothbrush. However,
like the inventions of Goldberg, the famous twentieth century
American artist used in his cartoons, the machine had to be overly
complicated and use 15 steps to put the toothpaste on the
toothbrush,
According to Jovanna Porter, enrichment teacher and one of the
group’s advisors, the students were required to submit a
preliminary design drawing and a series of photos showing the
machine’s progress, build the machine that performs the assigned
job, and demonstrate the machine and make an oral presentation.
The students designed a machine that accomplishes the goal by
using the following steps:
Straw guides a balloon along a stretched line.
Balloon strikes a hammer, causing it to fall.
The hammer punctures a water balloon.
Water balloon releases water.
Water causes a weight to fall.
The bucket causes a friction brake to disengage from a Chinese
yo-yo.
Yo-yo falls and collides with a see-saw.
See-saw causes three ball-bearings to roll.
Ball bearings cause a mousetrap to spring.
Mousetrap pulls on a train car, which is connected to another
train car through magnets.
Second train car travels down a track.
Ball bearing triggers a mousetrap with a toothbrush
attached.
Mousetrap causes toothbrush to move into position under a tube
of toothpaste.
The second ball bearing from the see-saw falls through several
zig-zag inclines and strikes a toggle.
The mousetrap pulls on the pulley and rollers.
Rollers squeeze toothpaste on the toothbrush.
“Our students built their contest entry at the machine shop of
the Smethport Specialty Co. after school, weekends, and vacation
days,” Porter said.
