[M.K. THOMPSON] How science competition changed my life forever

My earliest days as an engineer were spent building Rube Goldberg machines in a basement. Rube Goldberg machines are complex devices which perform relative simple tasks in interesting but needlessly convoluted ways. Goldberg probably never built such a device. Instead, he was a cartoonist (author, engineer, sculptor and inventor) who included what he referred to as "absurdly-connected machines" in political cartoons at the beginning of the 20th century.

Goldberg`s cartoons amused readers in five major newspapers, resulting in a Pulitzer Prize in 1948. But his greatest legacy is the countless contraption-building high school engineering contests that his cartoons inspired. I spent my last three years in high school working on a Rube Goldberg-like contraption of my own for the Mission Possible event in our local Science Olympiad tournament. It changed the course of my life forever.



The rules of the Mission Possible competition were relatively simple. The size of the machine was specified beforehand. Points were awarded for using five different types of energy (electrical, mechanical, thermal, chemical, and electromagnetic) and completing the task in the specified amount of time. Students were permitted to perform one action to start the machine. Points were deducted if the machine had to be touched or reset at any later time.

The task was usually a variation on a theme. At the beginning of the event, the machine contained three stationary balls. All three balls had to be transported to a small cup. Only one ball was permitted to move at any given time and the balls had to enter the cup in the reverse order in which they started.

Every year, I started the machine by using thermal energy to melt a piece of waxed string which released a pinball and set the machine in motion. The chemical energy transfer was always a baking soda/vinegar reaction that would propel a floating ping pong ball out of a bisected soda bottle and back onto the track to continue to its destination -- messy, but effective. The electromagnetic energy transfer usually involved an infrared sensor. The rest of the machine relied on solenoids removed from mechanical door bells, motor-actuated balsa wood gates, push button switches, mouse traps, a host of other random pieces of hardware and an unbelievable quantity of hot glue.

During those three years, the contraption and I spent a lot of time in basements. Construction on the first contraption began in a classmate`s basement. Various incarnations of the machine then moved to an industrial technology lab at a local university, and through the basements of two other friends before finally coming to rest on the ground floor of my parents` house.

You never really appreciate a good basement until you need a robust construction space that is large, quiet, low traffic and relatively impervious to saw dust, soldering irons, hot glue and vinegar. Because most home floor coverings melt or burn and are generally hard to clean, an unfinished basement with bare concrete floors is uncomfortable but ideal. The only additional requirements are reasonable lighting and a few electric outlets. If you don`t have a basement, an enclosed porch will often suffice.

Perhaps it seems a bit strange to have spent the last weekends of my childhood in a basement. After all, the machine didn`t do anything useful. But I thought that building it was fun. There was something tremendously joyful and fulfilling about hacking hardware together. I didn`t mind the fact that the contraption was constantly threatening to fall apart. I barely noticed the alternating burns that I received from newly soldered and hot-glued components that had yet to cool. It seemed that the machine and I were meant for each other.

The contraption helped me gain new knowledge, skills, confidence, and experience. But it did more than that. It somehow changed the way that I viewed the world. Nothing in my environment had a single purpose anymore. Everything was at risk of being incorporated into the machine: kitchen utensils, household appliances, the contents of the recycling bin -- nothing was safe.

I was also no longer a bystander. I could build things. That meant that I could change my environment. From that point it was a very small leap to realize that as an engineer I could build things and change the environment -- and the quality of life -- for other people too. I could make a difference and have fun at the same time. It seems that engineering and I were meant for each other as well.

Mission Possible is no longer offered as a Science Olympiads event. It has been replaced by the Junkyard Challenge. But I suspect that it, like model airplanes and railroads before it, set more than one engineer on the path to their future.

You can learn more about Science Olympiads at: http://soinc.org.