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Engineered to extremes at Footscray City College

12/09/2013

By Richard Willingham, The Age

The ability to make the simplest task as complicated as possible has earned a group of Footscray City College students a prestigious prize.

The year-10 students defeated teams from 14 other schools to take the title of the “2013 Amazing Spaghetti Machine Competition Champions” with their Rube Goldberg machine, a series of over-engineered chain reactions to carry out a simple goal.

Jake Lees, Vincent Victory, Alex Olsen and Rory Young have spent the past four months working on a device that could spray paint the word “Engineer”.

The young experimenters combined falling weights, rising water, marbles, pulleys, spray bottles, sodium carbonate and even litmus paper in their machine. They said it was a real “buzz” to be named competition champions.

Organised by the Melbourne School of Engineering, The Amazing Spaghetti Machine contest puts into practice skills in maths, science, engineering and project management.

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