Students in the gifted program at Penn-Trafford High School have spent all year designing, building, and finessing their ‘Rube Goldberg Machines’ for the annual Chain Reaction Contraption contest offered by Westinghouse and held on Friday, February 23 at Cranberry Woods Corporate Center.
The objective of this year’s contest was to score a goal in twenty steps. Each of Penn-Trafford’s two teams took a creative spin on the task. Team One chose an Alice in Wonderland theme where the goal was scored using the game of croquet. Team Two selected Pittsburgh sports as its theme, executing the theme of “score a goal” in three different ways.
Thirteen teams from eleven school districts competed at the event. While neither of Penn-Trafford’s teams qualified for the finals, Team Two's machine won "Most Green" for its use of homemade and recycled items.
10th-graders Jacob Lang, Evan Sadler, Ethan Goldsworthy and Logan Matrisch with their Pittsburgh Sports machine
Grant Alexander, Michael Harris, Marissa Fong and Amelia Haslam with their Alice In Wonderland machine
One of Penn-Trafford’s teams executed their machine for a group of local preschoolers who came to observe the competition