Chatfield students win Rube Goldberg competition again

The kids in Chatfield, Minn. (pop. 2,783), southeast of Rochester, are a physics dynasty in the making.

The team at Chatfield High School has captured first place in the Rube Goldberg competition in Indiana in Division II (high school ages).

It’s the second straight victory for the squad, which had to battle snow days to get their entry completed in time for the regional competition in Wisconsin earlier this month, the Rochester Post-Bulletin says.

The schools were given a single challenge and left to come up with something that would creatively accomplish the task. This year’s challenge: put money in a piggybank.

Here’s the winner. The Physics Pharm:

After the team won the regional competition, it put about 20 more steps into the project, which involved hundreds of hours and some nights at school.

“I knew we had a good machine,” said Gage Tuohy, a Chatfield senior and member of last year’s team.

The kids who’ll return next year say they’re already working on planning the entry for next year’s three-peat: turning off a light.