10/14/2022 Lexi Larson 3 min read
Written by Lexi Larson
Have you ever heard of Rube Goldberg comics? Created by Goldberg himself, the comics would show a simple task performed by a complex series of machines and mechanisms. While Goldberg was not known to build the creations depicted in his comics his fantastical, silly, and fun ideas inspired people to build machines that, per his theme, overly complicated simple tasks. The excitement that quickly surrounded Rube Goldberg machines caused them to grow in popularity, leading to countless DIY projects, homemade videos, local competitions, and museum pieces of particularly complex creations.
Illinois has its very own Rube Goldberg club that competes in the Purdue National Chain Reaction Competition every spring. Each year the competition provides one task for teams to tackle. Because it takes place on Purdue’s campus in West Lafayette, Indiana, teams must make their machines both effective and transportable.
“I saw Rube at EOH senior year of high school and thought it was so cool, so I got involved and stayed because of the cool team,” said Noor Ansari, Rube Goldberg Club President. “It is so fun to do arts and crafts after doing engineering all day.”
Illinois’ Rube Goldberg team particularly enjoyed the Spring 2022 competition as it was the first one offered in-person in two years. Placing second out of four teams, the team came home with great memories from talking to other teams about their machine-building experiences. Witnessing Purdue’s winning machine run in person helped team members better understand their competition as well as identify things they could do to improve their own designs. The team also learned a lot about the logistics of travel and making sure the machine could be easily transported across state lines.
The Rube Goldberg club is looking for students of all majors and ages to join. Despite being an engineering RSO, there is no majority-major makeup of the team. See the pie chart below for the breakdown of team members’ majors.
The team also provides lots of outreach opportunities, such as making appearances at SWE (Society of Women Engineers) and EC (Engineering Council) events as well as reaching out to schools. Knowing that people of various age groups already enjoy watching Rube Goldberg machines in action, the team hopes the outreach will build interest in creating them.
“Rube is a really low-commitment club, a great break from schoolwork, and lots of fun,” Noor said. “One day we could be doing physics, the next it might be paper mache.”
Every week, Rube Goldberg sub-teams meet to work on their machine. If you are interested in joining, their meetings are held Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, 5:00-7:00 pm in the Twilight Studio at the Siebel Center for Design. You can show up to a meeting or email rubeuiuc@gmail.com.