Honoring local cartoonist and engineer Rube Goldberg

Middle school students from Mill Valley’s Marin Horizon School will present Rube Goldberg Machines to honor the late cartoonist/engineer Rube Goldberg on Thursday Night. Marin Horizon’s middle school science curriculum uses the “Rubes” as a way for students to get hands-on engineering experience. Exploring energy, force, work and mechanical advantage students have built their own elaborate and creative Rube Goldberg contraptions taking a simple task and making it extraordinarily complicated.

“Our engineers are busy examining the structure and properties of vast amounts of junk, or ‘Rube Treasures’, and repurposing it into whacky and wonderful machine components. Students have turned their 2D “Rube-style” cartoon drawings into creative and complex 3D machines. We have machines in development that will feed a koala, crack a fortune cookie, top a hot dog, cut a cake, and catch a leprechaun – all in 15 easy steps!” says Middle School Science teacher Maureen Poxon.

Deeply embedded in every phase of this project are the 21st century skills demanded by current and future employers: collaboration, tenacity, and creativity. Students work in teams of four or five, utilizing mechanical engineering principles and materials science to hand craft each machine over the course of the semester. The event, on Thursday, November 19th at 6:30 p.m. at Marin Horizon School, was open to the public, and featured students presenting each machine to a large audience of family, friends and other community members.

Marin Horizon School believes that every child can grow up to make a difference in the world. Every day, our faculty enthusiastically delivers a top-notch education to children from preschool through middle school in joyful classrooms where academics and integrity are of equal importance. We do this because the world doesn’t just need smart people. The world needs smart people with the courage to be kind and to stand up for what’s right.