For the love of engineering

Rube Goldberg brings elementary school students, teenagers together to collaborate and create.

Kyung-Ae Prevost and Nayelli Toro

Hoffman Estates High School hosted its annual Rube Goldberg event in order to get elementary school kids excited about engineering.

This event involved schools from all around the community solving a simple task in a really complicated way.

Wayne Oras, a PLTW teacher at HEHS, mentions that the origins of this event dated all the way back ten years.

“We started doing this competition because it applies to our class and to real life,” said Oras.

The media center was transformed into a factory filled with Rube Goldberg machines all made by kids in elementary school. They were all able to think outside of the box and show off their creative thinking.

“I hope that they can leave having their hands on building something,” said Oras.

He also says he hopes they leave motivated and wanting to create something new.

Rhonda Conrad a teacher at Thomas Dooley Elementary School explained that their Rube Goldberg machine was based around kindness projects that the school had been doing throughout the year.

Conrad also said that she hopes the kids can learn about, “working together even when things get stressful, #together is better”