There was no shortage of ingenuity recently at Batavia Middle School as 8th-grade pupils demonstrated the projects they made for Rube Goldberg Day.
The event was similar to a science fair, except that the children displayed principles they had learned from their physics unit by building contraptions that would have made Rube Goldberg proud. Goldberg was a cartoonist who poked fun during the 1920s at the industrial age by describing elaborate machinery to substitute for simple tasks.
The 13- and 14-year-olds from Batavia who volunteered to do a project had to draw a Goldberg-like cartoon on a poster board outlining their idea, and then build the thing.
“Rube himself never built any of his ideas, but we challenged out students to take their Rube drawings one step further,” said Linda Richard, who organized the 8-year-old event with other science teachers Macy Felter and Jeannine Pierce. When Richard came to the school six years ago, about 85 pupils participated. This year more than 400 made Rube Goldberg devices.
So, the Learning Center at the school reverberated with the sound of clanging bells, falling balls, beeping horns, splashing water and laughing children.
Lindsey Mieling was surrounded by pupils wanting samples from her Chocolate Milk Making Machine. “When you give something away, you usually get a crowd,” she said philosophically, adding that the project cost her pretty much money, but luckily, she had investors–her parents.
In fact, most of the pupils acknowledged they relied on help from their parents to do the projects, whether it was giving a hand to find materials (there must have been a run on silver weighted balls, marbles, string and pulleys at local hardware shops), running power tools, or sharing some plain old-fashioned ingenuity.
“I loved it because I got to spend time with my grandfather,” said Nick Birkett, inventor of the Automated Breakfast machine.
Some inventions worked. “I did it all myself,” said Katie Bretson, who made The Snoozer, a device to turn off a braying alarm clock. Others? “It worked at home,” said Trish Oleson, staring ruefully at her Glue Dripper, shrugging her shoulders.
Most pupils discovered their final products varied quite a bit from their original designs. “The kids are really amazed when their inventions work,” said Richard.
