Rubber Bands

Rubber bands are worthless and unreliable. They cannot be trusted to repeat a performance even under identical conditions. If one decides that they will risk a grade on the reliability of a rubber band, they are setting themselves up for dire results and disappointment.

The assignment was to create a small car, built mainly from cardboard, powered by rubber bands. The rubber bands were wound tightly around an axel. After the car was released, the elasticity of the rubber bands would pull the band back to its original shape and length. This would in turn rapidly rotate the axel and spin the wheels, forcing the car into forward motion. Of course, that would occur in a perfect world. In practice, however, the rubber bands were much more likely to decide and do something different. If they felt like it, the rubber bands would defy all laws of physics and inexplicably pull toward each other. This would result in a tangled mess of rubber bands and would cease all functions of the vehicle. Also, if they wanted to, the rubber bands would defy gravity and start winding back up halfway through the unwinding process. This would result in activating the rage-inducing imaginary reverse gear of the vehicle, and the car would proceed to backpedal further than the original starting point. Only once in every blue moon would the rubber bands follow known laws of nature, provided they were a minimum of three feet away from the designated starting areas while the judges' backs were turned.

Similar heart wrenching displays occurred throughout the night, with various reactions from the engineering teams. Some members found humor in the situation. Particularly amusing was when the car was able to pull half a kilogram further than it was able to pull only the weight of itself. The only reasonable explanation for that was that rubber bands do not like to slack off. The lack of additional weight simply not enough of a challenge for them to decide to