Engineers win $1000 for 156-step burger

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind., April 6 (UPI) -- A team of engineers from Indiana's Purdue University have been awarded $1,000 for their creation of an elaborate 156-step hamburger-making machine.

Purdue won Saturday's annual Rube Goldberg Machine Contest, a competition in which engineering students from across the country create devices to perform basic jobs with the most possible number of steps, the Lafayette (Ind.) Journal and Courier reported.

"With all the hard work we've put into this machine, it's just fantastic," said Drew Wischer, Purdue Society of Professional Engineers team captain.

More than 1,500 people attended the competition at Purdue University to watch machines from seven U.S. universities creatively assemble hamburgers with at least one meat patty, two vegetables and two condiments in a pair of buns.

The winning machine featured King Kong scaling New York's Empire State Building, London's Big Ben clock and the Eiffel Tower in Paris among numerous other well-known structures.