Make a Marble Machine That Sorts by Size

The 2016 competition is over, but you can still try this challenge for fun! Can you build a machine that sorts two different sizes of marbles? How accurate can your marble machine be?

Full details, including the building, testing, and scoring procedures, can be found in the Marble Machine project.

Congratulations to All Participants

The 2016 Science Buddies Engineering Challenge, sponsored by Fluor Corporation, asked students to design marble machines capable of sorting a mixture of 6 mm and 12 mm spheres into separate cups. With over 600 entries worked on by more than 1700 students, the range of solutions was enormous! We were impressed by the ingenuity and perseverance students demonstrated, and enjoyed seeing each and every entry. Figure 1 shows just a small sample of the hundreds of marble sorting machines students created.

Drawing Winners

All eligible team entries were placed into random prize drawings based on their geographic location. Congratulations to the ten winning teams listed in Table 1 whose names were drawn from the eligible pools! Each of these teams earned $1,000 USD from Fluor Corporation for their school or afterschool program.

Top Ten Scores Overall

Curious about how your machine stacks up to entries from the 2016 Science Buddies Engineering Challenge? Figure 2 shows the distribution of scores across all entries received. The highest peak in the graph corresponds to the 17% of entries that scored less than 500 points. In general, most entries scored 4580 points or less. The top ten highest scores are listed in Table 2. No matter what your score, a marble machine that is built of the limited materials allowed and can successfully sort even some of the spheres is something to be proud of!