Judging
Teams of college students arrive at the competition with a tabletop Rube Goldberg machine designed to accomplish the task of the year. The machine must use at least twenty steps and complete the task within two minutes. Students typically choose a theme, often relating to popular films or historical periods.
Sixty percent of the score is based on the machine's ability to finish the task in two out of three attempts. The remaining forty percent of the score comes from the judges' general impressions of the team's theme, teamwork, and "Goldberg spirit". If the machine malfunctions, team members are permitted to manually guide it to the next step; a penalty is assessed for each intervention.
Read more about this topic: Rube Goldberg Machine Contest
Famous quotes containing the word judging:
“It is open to a war resister to judge between the combatants and wish success to the one who has justice on his side. By so judging he is more likely to bring peace between the two than by remaining a mere spectator.”
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869–1948)
“The sure way of judging whether our first thoughts are judicious, is to sleep on them. If they appear of the same force the next morning as they did over night, and if good nature ratifies what good sense approves, we may be pretty sure we are in the right.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)
“The question is whether they’ve reached a depth
Of desperation that would warrant poetry’s
Leaving love’s alternations, joy and grief,
The weather’s alternations, summer and winter,
Our age-long theme, for the uncertainty
Of judging who is a contemporary liar....”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)