Local high school students competed as future engineers to design functional machines using cardboard boxes, marshmallows, egg cartons, miscellaneous items and, of course, duct tape.

The Rube Goldberg contest, sponsored by the North Dakota Society of Professional Engineers, was held Wednesday at the Gateway to Science Center. It challenged students to think like engineers, inventing functional machines and solving any of the machine's flaws. This year's objective was to design a machine to wave an American flag.

"We want to get students thinking about careers in science or engineering," said John Spilman, a judge and vice president of the Society of Professional Engineers. "These students are having to think like engineers and problem solve through trial and error to form a solution."

The contest is based on the concepts of former engineer turned cartoonist, Rube Goldberg. Goldberg's cartoons depicted the most elaborate and ridiculous devices to accomplish the most mundane tasks. Teams were judged by seven professionals on how many steps the machine had and how successful it was.

The teams received their building materials in November, but when they arrived at the competition they had to turn in all used materials. New materials were issued, and the teams were given one hour to rebuild the machine following the same blueprints as the original.

"I think we tried new ideas every day," said Jose LaPorte of the Dakota Adventist team. "Our design is simple, it only has eight or nine steps, but it does what it is suppose to."

Other teams designed more complicated machines utilizing as many steps as possible to get a higher score. The Wavelengths, the only all-female team and winners from last year, developed 19 steps.

"We started building from the last step because that is the easiest," said Britnie Schlosser.

This year the Wavelengths took third place. Britnie and teammate Jessica Alm said they want to pursue careers in engineering because it is a lot of fun, "and in real life you won't have to finish a project in an hour," Jessica said. Other teammates on the all-junior team from Mandan are Whitney Streifel and Pam Klein.

The first-place team, Los Cupa Chab Ras from Bismarck High School, are James Allen, Aaron Axvig, Laura Axvig, Collin Hauger, Nate Keeler and Alan Wigness.

"It only took us six times to design our machine," Laura Axvig said. "But it was a lot harder getting it to work consistently. "

The Los Cupa Chab Ras will demonstrate their winning machine at the Bismarck chapter's Society of Professional Engineers banquet on Feb. 26 in honor of engineer week, Feb. 20-26.

Second place went to the Umbrella Corporation from Dakota Adventist. Team members are Brittanie Ladig, Michael Thurber, Stephen Miller and Nathan Way.

Five teams competed in the contest and were awarded $100 for first, $60 for second and $30 for third.

Two other teams from Dakota Adventist also competed. They were team 1024, Bartley Englehart, Joe Hwang, Whitney Reinke and Jose LaPorte and team Nuclear Penguins, Darren Naasz, Anthony Miller, Mitchell Hornung and Mikadla Miller.

(Reporter Kayla Cogdill can be reached at 250-8251 or kaylacogdill@bismarcktribune.net.)