S.T.E.A.M. Machines Success!

Mar. 22, 2016 — Inspiring, family-friendly, free educational fun. Good luck finding such a combination, right? Anyone who stopped by S.T.E.A.M. Machines at the Santa Monica Pier on March 12th found all that and more.

Start with teams of motivated students who designed, built, and operated innovative, complex contraptions that completed a series of whimsical steps to open an umbrella. Add prize money and an opportunity to take the winning contraption to a national competition and you have hundreds of students in varying degrees of excitement, panic, and determination to show off their original machines before a panel of expert judges. This was the third annual L.A. regional Rube Goldberg Machines contest, part of a day-long expo connecting the disciplines of science, technology, engineering, arts and math to the real world needs of solving today’s environmental issues.

Heal the Bay’s Santa Monica Pier Aquarium curated this event for the third year in collaboration with the Santa Monica Pier Corporation and sponsors iHeartMedia and Time Warner Cable’s Connect a Million Minds. The contest was the centerpiece of a day that included interactive booths showcasing everything from 3-D printing, robotics, an all-electric Volkswagen (converted from a gas combustion engine by Santa Monica High School students), turn-trash-into-art stations, and fresh-churned ice cream–created by bicycle pedal power.

The fun was not limited to the expo on the Pier deck; below at beach level our Aquarium gave visitors the opportunity to pilot our new mini underwater R.O.V. (remotely operated vehicle) and tinker with robotics and circuitry.

Master of Ceremonies for the day was Gray Bright, engineer by day, comedic talk show host by night. Between witticisms delivered in his Australian accent and his sense of wonderment at all the amazing gadgets and gizmos demonstrated, he put his talk show host skills to work, interviewing a series of powerhouse science and technology experts. All available seats were taken to hear about the career paths of Diana Skaar, Head of Business Innovation for X (formerly Google X); Kristina Kipp from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab’s Mars Rover program; Loretta Whitesides, an astrobiologist, founder astronaut and consultant at Virgin Galactic; and 18-yr-old L.A. robotics champ Cynthia Erenas.

S.T.E.A.M. Machines was a huge success, or as Santa Monica Pier Executive Director Jay Farrand said afterward: “Our success was written across the faces of all the happy students, families, and spectators that enjoyed the Pier in a new way on Saturday.”

Don’t miss it next year!