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It’s All About Inventions for Engineering Students

RALEIGH, N.C. (April 25, 2015) -Wake Tech students faced off today in a “Rube Goldberg” engineering competition on Main Campus. The challenge: Design and build a machine to perform a simple task in a not-so-simple way.

The competitors are students in an Introduction to Engineering class (EGR 150) who worked in teams to assemble their machines. Each machine was required to pop a balloon in a process with at least five steps, and each step must use the physics of gravity, mechanics, sound waves, light or electricity.

The competition is named after the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist (and engineer) Rube Goldberg, whose work depicts elaborate contraptions of levers, pulleys, wheels and gears completing simple, everyday tasks.

The winners are: 

First Place:

  • Alexander Askew
  • Daniel Braun
  • Brandon Cook
  • Ryan Faggins
  • Cameron Whitley 

Second Place:

  • Riley Downs
  • Jacob Krauza
  • Matt Smith
  • Facinet Sylla 

Third Place:

  • Katie Haney
  • Man Ho
  • Hau Liu 

The Rube Goldberg competition is one of eight projects that must be completed by students in Wake Tech’s Intro to Engineering course. The contest is a team-building experience that helps students learn how physics is integrated into engineering. The students are working toward the Associate in Science Engineering (pre-major) degree and planning to transfer to four-year institutions for further study.

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March 2025

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