Willo-Hill Christian School Team Builds Machine, Wins Second Place in International Competition

Willo-Hill Christian School, 4200 State Route 306 in Willoughby, recently received second place honors for creating a machine that was reminiscent of the movie Pee Wee’s Big Adventure (1985).

The school participated in the first annual International Online Rube Goldberg Contest, an online contest for middle school students from around the globe. Participating teams were tasked with building a machine to emulate the spirit of Rube Goldberg, a Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist, sculptor and author.

For this year’s competition, the Rube Goldberg machine needed to consist of a complex series of steps to accomplish the simple task of inflating a balloon and popping it. Willo-Hill Christian School’s team utilized a portion of the basement of their facility to accomplish the task with their machine titled “Under the Big Top!”

As the name suggests, the students built their machine with a circus theme in mind. The team painted the floor to look like dirt and hung vinyl table covers throughout the basement to give their machine the feel of actually being under a big top.

Judges of the contest included world famous kinetic artist Joseph Herscher, famous band OK GO and Rube Goldberg’s granddaughter, Jennifer George. George made the celebrated phone call to the school with the news of the victory.

Mrs. Tami D’Amico and her students spent approximately 4-5 weeks coming up with ideas and making their machine a reality. Willo-Hill is still vying for the People’s Choice Award to be decided on by public voting until May 15, 2012.

To support Willo-Hill in this venture, please click on our team page shown on the cover of www.RubeGoldberg.com.

Submitted by Willo-Hill Christian School, edited by Stefanie A. Toth, Editor