Students put their creativity and engineering skills to the test.
MU ASME / COURTESY
By Emmanouel Sofillas, Assistant Sports Editor
The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) at Manhattan University hosted an innovative event called the Blackbox Challenge, a Rube Goldberg machine competition where students put their creativity and engineering skills to the test.
The event, which drew participants from various engineering disciplines, encouraged students to design and build intricate machines that perform simple tasks through a complex chain of events.
The competition was held in Kelly Commons where teams of students were given limited materials and a set of rules to create their unique machines. The goal was to flow a marble into a cup through a series of complex events using the material students had on hand.
Dev Harrop-Williams, one organizer of Blackbox and a senior mechanical engineering major, explained the basic concept and grading criteria for the competition, emphasizing the challenge participants faced in creating a functional and aesthetically pleasing Rube Goldberg machine.
“We were expecting participants to essentially build a Rube Goldberg machine,” Harrop-Williams said. “A Rube Goldberg machine is essentially where one step or one obstacle leads to another, and it automatically causes a course of actions to achieve a certain goal. The goal was to get a marble into a coffee cup or whatever kind of container, and you were graded based on three criteria: how aesthetically pleasing your obstacle was, how complex your overall obstacle was, and whether or not your obstacle was successful.”
One participant, Ryan Hayes, a senior mechanical engineering major, reflected on their preparation and expectations for the competition, sharing their thoughts on the complexity of their design and confidence in the final result.
“I was expecting a lot of fierce competition, and we got that honestly, but I felt a lot of complexity in our design,” Hayes said. “I kept enriching that before entering this competition. I feel like the end result of our design was really sufficient, and I felt like we’re gonna win.”
When asked about the materials used to build their Rube Goldberg machine, Hayes listed the common household items they relied on for their design.
“Some of the items included cardboard, string wire, some forks and knives, tape, hot-glue, popsicle sticks, and the marbles,” Hayes said.
Hayes also shared some of the obstacles their team faced during the competition, particularly the challenges with stability and the need for quick-thinking.
“Some challenges were definitely our structures falling apart,” Hayes said. “For example, the ball fell off a couple of times, and honestly became kind of a challenge. What we did was that we had to go back and just create a more stable structure, and in the end result, that’s how it worked.”
Another Blackbox organizer, Kelly Roth, a sophomore mechanical engineering major, reflected on how the event tied into the values taught at the university, highlighting the connection between education and the collaborative spirit of the competition.
“I think this is the kind of core of what we’ve been taught, the Jasper community and the Lasallian values, and it brings us all together,” Roth said. “As an engineer, it’s really great. It’s just kind of combining all the principles we’ve been taught.”
Harrop-Williams also highlighted how the Blackbox competition aligns with the core values of ASME, emphasizing the importance of leadership and adaptability.
“I think this reflects the values of ASME because it requires leadership, initiative, outside-the-box thinking, teamwork, and I think the overall element of Blackbox was that the box was metaphorically black in the sense that you didn’t know what was inside of it before opening it,” Harrop-Williams said. “So you have to learn how to take initiative at the same time as going with the flow.”