New Auburn High School's Technology/Engineering and Mathematics/Concepts of Engineering Program won first place in the national Rube Goldberg Machine Engineering Contest on April 28, 2006, at the Milwaukee Art Museum. Pictured on bottom row from left are teacher Tim Lambele, Ezra Gotham, student teacher Sam Goettl, Matt Javener, Jessie Skaw and teacher Jim Skuban; on top row from left are Zack DeWilde, Shane North, Brandon North and Chris Blaine.

Putting toothpaste on a toothbrush or sticking a stamp on a letter might seem like simple tasks to accomplish. But not if you're a Rube Goldberg competitor.

Each year the Rube Goldberg Machine Contest challenges students nationwide to complicate a simple task in the spirit of artist and amateur engineer Rube Goldberg, whose historic wacky cartoons earned him a Pulitzer Prize.

Goldberg drew cartoons featuring elaborately silly "inventions" that satirized new gadgets of his era, the early 1900s. In one cartoon, shop windows stay clean via a process where a man slips on a banana peel, causing him to fall on a rake, causing the handle of the rake to rise and throw a horseshoe onto a rope, which sags, thereby tilting a sprinkling can of water.

The Machine Contest is designed to pull students away from conventional problem-solving and push them into the endless chaos of imagination and intuitive thought - a realm that New Auburn High School students know well.

New Auburn High School's Technology/Engineering and Mathematics/Concepts of Engineering Program won first place in the 2006 contest held April 28 at the Milwaukee Art Museum. New Auburn was also the state champion in 2001 and 2005, and national champion in 2005.

This year's challenge was to cut or shred into strips five sheets of 8.5-inch-by-11-inch, 20-pound paper individually with a shredder and place in a recycling bin in 20 or more steps. Students were judged on how they made the solution as complicated and convoluted as possible. The minimum number of steps to finish the task was 20; however, the more the better.

New Auburn instructors Jim Skuban and Tim Lambele recruited seven seniors Jessie Skaw, Shane North, Ezra Gotham, Chris Blaine, Brandon North, Matt Javener and Zack DeWilde for the team last fall. Each student had to design and construct a five-function machine using computer-aided drafting fundamentals.

"It's true engineering," Skuban said. "The kids are problem solving and trouble shooting constantly, all striving to achieve their goal. It was an outstanding team activity."

Student teacher Sam Goettl, a Stanley-Boyd native and senior at University of Wisconsin-Stout, oversaw construction of the project. It took team members about 800 hours to design and construct their project, working in class, after school, weekends, and on spring break.

The theme of the New Auburn's machine was "Grandma's Kitchen," a 30-function machine that starts when a door swings open, which trips a hammer, which hits a clock that releases an onion down a spice rack. The onion hits a spoon, knocking a ball of soap into a sink and down the drain. The soap then hits a block of cheese into a mouse trap, setting off the trap and pulling a hand off a scale. The scale pushes on a broom that bends a curtain rod, which releases an egg down a plate rack. The egg knocks over a row of cookbooks, which hits a boot. The boot then knocks over another row of books that startles a bird. The bird releases a rolling pin that rolls down a table shredding five of Grandma's secret cookie recipes. The rolling pin hits a spoon, which causes the table to drop open, releasing the shredded recipes into a recycling bin.

Several other state schools also created wacky contraptions for preliminary rounds of the competition, including Chippewa Falls, Pius XI, Arrowhead, Milwaukee Hamilton, Brillion, J.I. Case, Spooner, Reedsburg, Loyal, Bayfield, Waunakee and Cuba City.

The top three schools in the state competition were Loyal, New Auburn and Cuba City, which won first, second and third place respectively. The top two schools, Loyal and New Auburn, advanced to nationals where Loyal won second place and New Auburn took first place.

The New Auburn team received a large national traveling trophy, a national permanent trophy and a state runner-up trophy. New Auburn also won the Peoples Choice Award, in which the public and students voted for their favorite machine.

"I have never been so proud of our kids," Lambele said. "Their ability to bounce back from state competition and defend their national title showed their true character of being great champions."

Posted May 17, 2006