CORRECTION: In a previous photo caption accompanying this story, the date of when the groups will build the machine was misstated. Build day is on Oct. 25. The Daily Orange regrets this error.

Students from different backgrounds are coming together for one task: to build a machine that has multiple moving parts, but only has one function.

IDEA, a program that promotes student startups at Syracuse University, is teaming up with students to build a Rube Goldberg machine. The machine will be built in Marshall Square Mall after the final day of planning.

A Rube Goldberg machine is a device designed to accomplish a simple task through a series of complicated motions and reactions.

The plan for building the machine is to bring together teams that represent different backgrounds, said Erin Miller, an IDEA connector, who came up with the project. Some of the teams, for example, are representing schools and colleges at SU.

Teams will meet up and plan until Oct. 25, when they’ll each build a section that performs a specific task — putting it together with other teams’ sections to create the final product. Ultimately, the machine reveals a banner promoting IDEA, said Miller, a sophomore advertising major.

“For this, it’s just so loose that people can do whatever they want,” Miller said. “There are really no limits. I think people need to think that a lot more on campus.”

Tony Kershaw, student entrepreneurial consultant and program coordinator for IDEA, said he encourages any student on campus to get involved.  Students can get involved on their own, he said, joining a team on site, or come in with their own teams.

“We need designers, builders and creatives of all kinds,” Kershaw said.

Michael Gorman, the leader of the team from the L.C. Smith College of Engineering and Computer Science, said he thinks the biggest challenge will be building the actual machine.

“I’ve built one of these before,” Gorman, a sophomore mechanical engineering major, said. Building it, he said, takes a lot of troubleshooting. The plan for the Rube Goldberg project is to start, build and troubleshoot the machine within four hours — all with multiple teams with multiple ideas.

”I don’t see it being finished that quickly,” he said.

While Gorman sees difficulties in building the machine, he said he looks forward to the project because he hopes to do “pretty elaborate things with the machine.”

David Ehrlich, the president of the Entrepreneurship Club, said he foresees problems with his team’s actual construction of the machine

He said he can contribute creativity, but lacks the craftsmanship training for creating the machine.

“I’m an entrepreneurship and accounting major trying to build a machine. That cannot go well,” Ehrlich said.

But he said he remains optimistic about the finished product.

Stacey Keefe, director of IDEA, said she likes how the project brings together students from all different schools to create something.

She described the project as a “fun way” for innovative students to come together and bring “like-minded, out-of-the-box thinkers” together.

 

 

 

Published on October 10, 2013 at 2:09 am

Contact: clmoran@syr.edu