Tech Center Engineering Students Take First Place in Rube Goldberg Competition

They put in a lot of hours, working before and after school, and it clearly paid off.  New Visions Engineering students from The Tech Center at Putnam/Northern Westchester BOCES felt the worth of their effort when they took home first place in the Engineering Expo’s Rube Goldberg competition at White Plains High School recently.

Tech Center teachers Carlo Vidrini and Gerry Markel are proud of their students’ dedication to create a series of simple machines to meet the competition challenge of “zipping a zipper.”

The competition is named for American Reuben "Rube" Goldberg who is best known for a series of popular cartoons depicting complicated gadgets that perform simple tasks in indirect, convoluted ways.

“We had about a month to work on the project, but we came in before and after class to make sure we got it done,” said Mahopac High School senior Trevor Betham. Trevor will attend SUNY Maritime to study naval architecture in the fall.

“We had difficulty with consistency,” said Andrew Wise from Peekskill,” but we kept working at it.”

In true Rube Goldberg style, the contraption consisted of a “cross bow, ramps, mallets and carts,” said Isaac Silver-Frankel from John Jay High School. Isaac plans to study engineering at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Eleven of the 12 Tech Center students will study engineering in various colleges in the fall.