The Benefits of Supporting the Rube Goldberg Team - Part 1

What skills are developed in participating on or supporting a Rube Goldberg team? That's the first question you might ask. Here is my experiential response. I will be doing this in multiple short posts, because the answer is complex, and my time is limited.

A True STEAM Opportunity

Science. Technology. Engineering. Art and Math. Rube Goldberg was an 1800s engineer who found his calling as an artist. His name is well associated with elaborate contraptions you can find on the internet. You might ask... why do we care about Art? Isn't STEM enough? The art provides for the engagement. Without engagement, there is no team.

Here is a creative commons image of Rube Goldberg's work (from Wikimedia Commons).

It's Playful

Rube Goldberg devices inspire the imagination. Many of us think... We could never do that! We are not creative enough! We don't know how to do that. On a team, given time, you are playing your way towards the end goal.

It's Inventive

As you play, you are actually inventing a new solution to a problem. The actual problem that you are solving may not be one that folks want to pay to solve, but the invention you create today can lead to the next invention you create - tomorrow. You just have to believe that you can, enough to try.

The competition provides the problem to solve, but the components of the solution can be applied to any problem you want to solve, and vice-versa.

It's a Prototyping Environment and Opportunity

The value of this, I understood from the progression over 2 weeks of a class project. We went from a cardboard tower challenge to a working peanut feeding machine.

Here is a video about that progression:

Could it be better?

Whatever you create, it can always be better. You get to choose when it's good enough. You get to choose when to stop developing that solution. That is very empowering.

I hope you appreciate what I'm sharing here. This is near and dear to me, and I support the development of Rube Goldberg teams from the Makersville Makerspace in Shoreline Village, Long Beach and from the Trellis Learning Center in La Cañada, California. Makersville and Makersville Services host a regional competition of the International Rube Goldberg Machine competition.

Join Makersville http://makersville.net or Trellis https://www.trellislearning.or... for a camp session in Summer 2025 or simply contact me for information on starting a team for the Rube Goldberg 2026 competition.

Subscribe to my Squigglemom YouTube channel.