The 2007 Rube Goldberg Contest

For those who don't know about this 20th century cultural icon (or aren't old enough to remember), Rube Goldberg was a cartoonist who was famous for drawing complicated machines to perform a simple task. There are some wonderful cartoons of his adventures here.

Purdue University's chapter of Theta Tau, a professional engineering fraternity, sponsors a nationwide contest for college students to see who can invent and assemble the most whimsical and complicated machine to carry out a given task . You can see a video of some of the machines in this year's competition.

Thanks to the Librarians' Index to the Internet for this heads-up!