HBW’s new technology and engineering teacher Julia Harth is at it again: Fresh from launching (quite literally) a competition to build student-sized pumpkin catapults, she has involved her seventh-grade T.E.D. cycle students to create Rube Goldberg machines.
Goldberg was a 20th century, Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist who drew complicated machines to complete simple tasks. Rube Goldberg, Inc., a group dedicated to keeping his spirit of inventiveness alive, hosts annual competitions for middle school, high school and college students. The theme of this year’s competition is “Open An Umbrella” and each machine must have at least 10 steps to complete that task.
This is the first year that H.B. Whitehorne has participated in the Rube Goldberg machines contest and it will go something like this. On Wednesday, March 23, students will be presenting their Rube Goldberg machines during the day and after school in the middle school’s auditorium. HBW’s science teachers have signed their classes up to visit the exhibition throughout the school day, and families and friends are welcome after school from 3 to 4 p.m.
All visitors will get to vote for their favorite machine, which will be submitted to the main Rube Goldberg, Inc. contest at the beginning of April. The submission fee is $150, so students and parents are being asked to buy a voting ballot for $1 apiece.
