Puxi Grade 5: Rube Goldberg Machine Contest

A few months ago, Team iKids of 5(1) found out about the Rube Goldberg Machine Contest. The members of the team, Vicky, Maya, Tesslyn, Jenghiz, Chenchen, Leonie, Enqi, Warren, Michel, Victoria, Christina, Athena and I, all felt extremely excited. If we built a machine good enough, I thought, SHSID could become famous! We immediately set to work, trying to build a machine to open an umbrella.

The making of the machine was extremely difficult. The machine’s parts created many problems, since they had to align perfectly. Each mini-machine had to be portable, strong, and reliable too, which made it even harder to think of machines. The rules sounded even more terrifying: 10 to 75 steps, not counting repeated ones, less than 2 electronic devices, counting even a wire as an electronic device… after these were read out, many of us lost the hope of winning. After the first few meetings, some people quit. Still, the rest of us carried on working and formed a good team. We were determined to complete the machine—and make it the best machine, too.

Every week, our team held a meeting in which we would share our ideas and discuss different parts of our machine. First, we decided upon the materials we would use—small toys and recycled materials—so that we could make plans about how to spend our money. After about five meetings, we had the materials ready and a rough plan of what machine we were going to make.

Soon, we had created a working mini-machine in each of our homes, and we all brought them to the office to put them together. We were all amazed—how was the machine so big? It had more than 75 steps, and it was way out of the 2m x 2m regulations. We couldn’t believe our eyes! A meeting was then held to decide which steps to delete.

We thought that building our very own machine was a huge feat already, but there were more surprises in store for us. After a month of judging, the results came back; we had won the $1,500 global prize! We won first place in the world! People came to school to interview us, and we were amazed at how good the interviewers said our machine was.

Ms. Shirley, our homeroom teacher, was also very happy. We helped to add to the good reputation of the school. That isn’t something that everyone can do. I learned how to do team work with my friends. In addition, we tried to solve all the problems by ourselves. Lastly, I would like to say, building a machine was an amazing experience.

(Written by Lucy Collinson Picture by Lily Yao)