6-13-08

Rube Goldberg Day at Walpole School

By Chuck and Sue Bingaman, Contributing Writers

            What do you get when you combine 60 energetic 8th graders in the last week of the school year, creative, experienced teachers, more than 2 miles of duct tape, 317 marbles, nearly $200,000 in braces?

            Rube Goldberg Day yesterday at Walpole School! The day when units on physics are translated into colorful, crashing, even flaming, demonstrations of gravity, motion, potential and kinetic energy and lots of fun!  No mere dropping of apples from Newton’s tree for these kids!

            Started by former Walpole teacher Robert Brown more than a decade ago, Rube Goldberg Day commemorates the bizarre contraptions created by award-winning cartoonist Rube Goldberg in the 20th century. Goldberg’s hilarious cartoon machines were designed to perform simple tasks in indirect, convoluted ways.  Since his death in 1970, schools throughout the world have begun using the creativity and humor involved in Goldbergian designs to help students learn elementary principles of physics.

            In Thursday’s 8th grade show of Goldberg-inspired machines, two and three student teams of students, under the supervision of science teacher Kim Lewis and others, created—and named—machines to break eggs for frying, feed goldfish, flash fry tennis balls, and more.

            With “Rube Goldberg to the Eggstreme” Chelsea Gay, Megan Smith and Karli McCormick designed a machine using marbles rolling along tilting troughs that turn levers that eventually drop fresh eggs into a frying pan with just enough force to break the shells.

            Courtney Phillips, Alysia Evey and Amanda Clark built “The Hampster Maze” in which a very intelligent and cooperative hamster lit a light bulb after traversing a complicated maze that included a teeter-totter and a box full of turns.

 Siana Searles, Andrea Perkins,and Chloe Shoppmeyer with their "Fish Food" machine at Thursday's Walpole School Rube Goldberg Day.  Sue Bingaman photo.

        In the “Tunealater” Alyssa Burns and Kaian Wilkes created a complicated, multi-step machine in which marbles flowed down a corkscrewing length of PVC that eventually triggered a contact that started an Ipod recording a song.

            “Felix” the goldfish enjoyed his automatic feeding device, “Fish Food”, designed by Siana Searles, Chloe Schoppmeyer, and Andrea Perkins even if it required a complex system of pulleys and swinging pieces to finally spew the food in his general direction!

            Megan Sellarole and Katelyn Atwood created “Hopywoks” and hoped it’d work to light a little flashlight bulb after rolling marbles, tilting levers, and falling wedges of wood eventually resulted in electrical contacts being made.

            “By this time in the school year,” laughed science teacher Kim Lewis, “ the kids are getting a little tired of the routine, and it’s getting harder to keep their attention. The Rube Goldberg project is a great way of engaging them and allowing them to apply some important principles of physics in a creative way.  And, they learn from each other and practice some teamwork as well.”

            Principal Sam Jacobs noted Thursday that “any time middle school students can do problem solving together it’s really valuable.  Problem solving is, obviously, a skill they'll use all their lives, and it’s really important.  This project also helps them develop their teamwork skills and the habits of learning form each other.

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