SageLife — which has senior living communities in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Massachusetts — is engaging its residents with Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) activities.

Residents across SageLife communities recently participated in a unique competition in which the challenge was building Rube Goldberg machines out of everyday household items. Named after the American cartoonist, a Rube Goldberg machine is a chain reaction-type machine or contraption intentionally designed to perform a simple task in an indirect and overly complicated way.

The competition was designed to challenge those with prior STEM experience.

Residents showed enthusiasm for the competition, creating innovative and clever machines, many of which incorporated items like tubes, dominoes, and children’s toys. The competition had impressive results, with some machines taking several days to construct and test.

Plush Mills in Wallingford was crowned the winner, as residents Beverly Grant, Dick Kirchner, Gerda McKale, Marie Schaefer, Milton Silverstein, Judy Sobel, Karen Winder, Dorothy and Marv Gelb, and Ken Wright assisted with the design and building of the machine. The final product used a variety of supplies, including plastic cups, marbles, gutter tubing, funnels, old Hot Wheels tracks, dominoes, rope, string, toy cars, broomsticks, books, Legos, ping pong balls, weights, and hangers.

“Arts and culture have always been the most popular programming ideas in retirement communities, but as our resident populations grow, so do their interests,” said Kim Smith, SageLife’s Vice President of Operations. “Our Rube Goldberg competition lent itself to those in our community with experience or interest in STEM-related topics. It was amazing to see everyone’s diverse knowledge come together to create their machines.”

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