The Windsor Central School District sent six teams from grades 7-12 to the Broome-Tioga BOCES Engineering Day competition on Monday and Tuesday, with a Black Knight 8th grade team taking home 2nd place in the Rube Goldberg Machine competition.
A Rube Goldberg machine uses a chain reaction to perform a simple task in an indirect and overly complicated way. Lynette Montz, Aubrey Tyler, and Eisley Leonard built a contraption to use a ball to ring a bell.
“We built a ramp to make a ball go down and knock over dominoes and made a pulley to have it drop down a cup,” said Montz. “It was really fun. I was surprised (when we finished 2nd).”
“When we approached it, we all came up with a separate plan then we all put them together so that all of our ideas were part of it,” said Tyler, who is exploring being an architect when she gets older.
The trio used a number of materials, including a foam sheet, paper, clay, table tennis balls, jingle bells, a pulley and string, rubber bands, paper clips, magnetic marbles, and wooden rods.
“I was really surprised because we had to touch the ball to keep it going, which deducted some points, so I was surprised we got 2nd. It felt good,” said Leonard. “I felt we worked really well together. We know each other from past grades and teams.”