 We have candy falling into a jack-o'-lantern, a bust hits a ghost which pulls a string which pours candy into a jack-o'-lantern. Just about everything that could go wrong with that has gone wrong. We have rebuilt that jack-o'-lantern probably dozens of times and every time that we would reset up the machine something would move, like the back wall would tilt just the slightest bit and we'd have to redo it all again. This is Rebecca Tarosky, a freshman at Penn State University and she's in Columbus, Ohio for the 2015 Rube Goldberg Machine Contest. College students from all over the country are here to show off the funniest, smartest, most ingenious contraptions they could come up with and they're pretty serious about it. We would work 10 to 5 at the very least every Saturday and Sunday. It would usually run later than that. Starting in November all the way until now. We put in almost 800 hours in the past year. We've slept about 8 hours in the last 48 hours between driving and doing this. Early mornings and late nights. I've spent 16, 18 hour days working on this. I've woken up in the middle of the night like oh this is how we can do this and wrote it down and lots of fun. So, Rube Goldberg machines were invented by a guy named Rube Goldberg. Big surprise. Rube was a famous cartoonist, but he was also an engineer. And one of his cartoons was about an engineering professor named Professor Lucifer Gargonzola Butts, who built the wackiest, most complicated machines to do the simplest tasks. The competition challenges teams to come up with their own real world Rube Goldberg machines designed to complete a specific, mundane task. The objective of the machine this year is to erase a blackboard. I think there's a certain amount of people that would just kind of say it's pointless because if the goal is to erase a chalkboard, why don't you just erase a chalkboard? We're taking the hardest approach to get there. But I think that curiosity in us makes us want to really understand how things work and just have fun with it. So the rules for the Rube Goldberg competition college nationals are pretty simple. Your machine has to have a minimum of 20 steps and a maximum of 75. You can't use too many power tools and you get 10 square feet in which to operate. But since one of the goals of the competition is to honor Rube's cartoons, the spirit of the machine is important too. They'll judge you on whimsicality and use of everyday objects and laugh parameters to how funny it is. My favorite part on the machine is probably the slime. It's really fun to watch that one go, especially because we have a little ink pen that hits the balls and they just roll up, which seems impossible, but it's just mechanics. Honestly I would say my favorite part is our turkey destroyer just for the laugh quality. I thought the Penn State competition, the MC was like, oh man, if there was an award for best turkey destroyer, you guys would have it. He's not lying, it was pretty cool. With so many moving parts, the machines are delicate to say the least. Of course building them is one thing, but then you have to break them down and move them hundreds of miles and put them back together and pray that they work. Just getting there with the machine in one piece can be a challenge. Iowa State almost didn't get there at all. We wrecked the car once. It's our second truck. It took a lot of fine tuning of how much is the right amount. When they arrived at the competition, the University of Wisconsin team found that the machine sat a little uneven, and it made the machine behave unpredictably. We've had runs, something that's run a hundred times perfectly, and then all of a sudden it will not work. What do we do? How do we fix it? Do we change it? Does it work so many times before and it hasn't worked three times, but do we touch it? I don't know. This year, Purdue's Society of Professional Engineers took first place. But that didn't even really matter. Everyone there was just happy to let people finally see these contraptions they've been slaving over. I think also everyone was glad to finally have a reason to goof around with science.
 We have candy falling into a jack-o'-lantern, a bust hits a ghost which pulls a string which
 pours candy into a jack-o'-lantern. Just about everything that could go wrong with that has
 gone wrong. We have rebuilt that jack-o'-lantern probably dozens of times and every time that
 we would reset up the machine something would move, like the back wall would tilt just the
 slightest bit and we'd have to redo it all again.
 This is Rebecca Tarosky, a freshman at Penn State University and she's in Columbus, Ohio
 for the 2015 Rube Goldberg Machine Contest. College students from all over the country
 are here to show off the funniest, smartest, most ingenious contraptions they could come
 up with and they're pretty serious about it.
 We would work 10 to 5 at the very least every Saturday and Sunday. It would usually run later
 than that. Starting in November all the way until now.
 We put in almost 800 hours in the past year.
 We've slept about 8 hours in the last 48 hours between driving and doing this.
 Early mornings and late nights.
 I've spent 16, 18 hour days working on this. I've woken up in the middle of the night like
 oh this is how we can do this and wrote it down and lots of fun.
 So, Rube Goldberg machines were invented by a guy named Rube Goldberg. Big surprise.
 Rube was a famous cartoonist, but he was also an engineer. And one of his cartoons was about
 an engineering professor named Professor Lucifer Gargonzola Butts, who built the wackiest,
 most complicated machines to do the simplest tasks.
 The competition challenges teams to come up with their own real world Rube Goldberg machines
 designed to complete a specific, mundane task.
 The objective of the machine this year is to erase a blackboard.
 I think there's a certain amount of people that would just kind of say it's pointless
 because if the goal is to erase a chalkboard, why don't you just erase a chalkboard?
 We're taking the hardest approach to get there. But I think that curiosity in us makes us
 want to really understand how things work and just have fun with it.
 So the rules for the Rube Goldberg competition college nationals are pretty simple. Your
 machine has to have a minimum of 20 steps and a maximum of 75. You can't use too many
 power tools and you get 10 square feet in which to operate. But since one of the goals
 of the competition is to honor Rube's cartoons, the spirit of the machine is important too.
 They'll judge you on whimsicality and use of everyday objects and laugh parameters to
 how funny it is.
 My favorite part on the machine is probably the slime. It's really fun to watch that one
 go, especially because we have a little ink pen that hits the balls and they just roll
 up, which seems impossible, but it's just mechanics.
 Honestly I would say my favorite part is our turkey destroyer just for the laugh quality.
 I thought the Penn State competition, the MC was like, oh man, if there was an award
 for best turkey destroyer, you guys would have it.
 He's not lying, it was pretty cool.
 With so many moving parts, the machines are delicate to say the least. Of course building
 them is one thing, but then you have to break them down and move them hundreds of miles
 and put them back together and pray that they work. Just getting there with the machine
 in one piece can be a challenge. Iowa State almost didn't get there at all.
 We wrecked the car once. It's our second truck. It took a lot of fine tuning of how much is
 the right amount.
 When they arrived at the competition, the University of Wisconsin team found that the
 machine sat a little uneven, and it made the machine behave unpredictably.
 We've had runs, something that's run a hundred times perfectly, and then all of a sudden
 it will not work. What do we do? How do we fix it? Do we change it? Does it work so many
 times before and it hasn't worked three times, but do we touch it? I don't know.
 This year, Purdue's Society of Professional Engineers took first place. But that didn't
 even really matter. Everyone there was just happy to let people finally see these contraptions
 they've been slaving over. I think also everyone was glad to finally have a reason to goof
 around with science.