The NCFU has held its first engineering contest on Rube Goldberg Machines, where students came to lock horns and see who is best in this ironic yet still complicated task.

Rube Goldberg Machines are typically complex devices that allow performing simple tasks in some deliberately overcomplicated ways, while the major purpose of the contest was to enhance students’ interest in engineering as well as to promote their creative skills.

– Such a format of engineering contests helps young talents reveal what they are up to through this event, which is far from a really serious one, and yet they create a complex and effective mechanism, which is useful as well. Notable is that here we have youth majoring in many different areas, and this is a perfect way to both se who is best and to exchange experience, – Azamat Luev (Pro-Rector for Youth Policy, NCFU) was quoted as saying.

The Jury rated the works based on 5 criteria: the mechanism complexity (namely the length of the transformation chain); the machine design; the presentation; the idea conceptuality, and the promotion of the project online throughout the day, which must have been a tough task in itself, and still, as they concluded, here come the winners:

Place 1 – The 5 Diodes Team (Institute of Digital Development): Nikita Gusev, Hrachik Mehrabyan, Pavel Nebytov, Anastasia Cherkashina and Elizaveta Logvinova;

Place 2 – The Retarded Team (Pyatigorsk Branch of NCFU): Anastasia Podgornaya, Alina Krisalnaya, Valentina Volnova, Alexandra Zubko, Evgenia Luzhevskaya;

Place 3 – NCFU Institute of Engineering Team: Alim Berbekov, Dmitry Kutsev, Dmitry Kosyanenko, Nikita Davydov.

Great job, people!