40 thoughts on “Magnets, marbles, and ball bearings: a fantastic device”

  1. It would be more impressive (not that it isn’t already) if they showed that this was part of a large single construction. It seems to be a series of separate contrivances arranged to look like the frames are continuous.

    1. If you look at the woodgrain patterns, it becomes readily apparent that it’s all shot against the exact same tabletop. Plus, there’re white balance and exposure changes from shot to shot, meaning it was done with autoexposure over a number of sessions.

      Considering that, to have been done in a single take, it would have needed a football stadium, or maybe an industrial-sized chimney, I think it fair to give credit to the artist for creating the impression of such immensity while actually working in a studio perhaps no bigger than a college dorm room.

      Now, if the artist can catch the eye of somebody able to throw a big enough budget at it to do something like this on a large scale, that would be neat….

      b&

      1. Agreed about the woodgrain, also at least one of the small wood ‘bars’ with a distinctive streak has been reused in each frame.

        However, it would have been trivially easy to construct the the entire assemblage at once, just given a sufficiently large baseboard and sufficient number of balls and wood blocks. Not nearly as hazardous as large domino assemblies. The non-trivial aspect would have been finding a room and baseboard big enough.

        What I’m saying is, filming each frame separately does not permit any effect that couldn’t have been as readily done in a full length assembly, so it doesn’t detract from the kudos.

        I love the timing at 1:40, where the falling magnet nudgess a marble to the left, then does a Tarzan on a ‘string’ of magnets to knock the same marble back to the right, then rebounds down to hit the same marble and propel it on its way. Magnificent!

        cr

        1. I doubt it would be trivially easy. Every time I’ve seen a making of type video for Rube Goldberg contraptions, it takes attempt after attempt after attempt to get a take where everything works properly. And the more steps, the more likelihood of failure. I wonder how many attempts it took for each one of these scenes.

          1. You may be correct.

            I had assumed that each particular ‘frame’ was repeatable, that is, that each frame, once set up and adjusted, could be relied to repeat itself reliably.

            In that case it could be left ready while the next frame was set up and so on until all frames were ready. Stacking all the frames end to end would not, then, alter the difficulty of any individual frame. The frames are independent in that the performance of each frame does not depend on the previous frame or affect the following one.

            If, as you note, the frames could not be relied on to repeat their performance reliably every time, then I agree that combining them does compound the difficulties.

            cr

      2. Now, if the artist can catch the eye of somebody able to throw a big enough budget at it to do something like this on a large scale, that would be neat….

        Honda?

  3. Clever monkey! It is like a metabolic pathway, as these too are a Rube Goldbergian series of energy transfers.

    1. Mark,

      Glad to see I wasn’t the only one who thought of cell metabolism. Amazing little machines.

  4. For some reason this reminds me of Angry Birds, and how hitting a particular piece of the construction has consequences to bring it all down if you hit it just right. It’s all physics and design!!!

  5. Reminds me of the spectacular OK Go music video, viewable at youtube: qybUFnY7Y8w

  6. “Ever since I was a young boy
    I’ve played the silver ball
    From Soho down to Brighton
    I must have played them all

    But I ain’t seen nothing like him
    In any amusement hall
    That deaf, dumb and blind kid
    Sure plays a mean pinball

    … ”

    – Who

    1. Perfect tune therefor !
      … … and it does do .something. !

      It does ~4 minutes’ time of worthy stess – busting … … its darling mesmerization !

      “That (1/2 -) deaf … … kid,”
      Blue

    1. I’m pretty sure that people have made digital hydraulic computers. I’m even more sure that they’ve (maybe not the same “they”) made analogue hydraulic computers. At least one to model economics.
      By “hydraulic computer”, I mean a computer whose working fluid is not electrons in wires, but water in tubes.

      1. And, of course, Charles Babbage and his mechanical difference engine of the mid-19th century.

        1. As I got onto the front page at Slashdot a couple of days ago (the team attempting a construction of a complete Analytical Engine posted a status update).

          1. Yes there have been digital hydraulic computers, or at least one. Scientific America carried an article about one in the ’70s.

      2. I think you’re thinking of ‘fluidics’. Has very limited applications, though possibly in areas of extremely high electromagnetic flux…

        Speaking of fluids…

        What I find fascinating and at first sight ‘impossible’ is the vortex tube, whereby you blow compressed air into a fancy tube and you get hot air out one end and cold air out the other. With no moving parts!
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex_tube

        As counter-intuitive as the Giffard injector whereby low-pressure exhaust steam is used to pump water into a high-pressure boiler, again with no moving parts.

        cr

        1. A counter-intuitive tool that we used to use in the integrated circuit industry is the Bernoulli pickup. By blowing down on the top surface of a 100 mm silicon wafer, through a hole on a flat disc, the wafer can be picked up with no contact at all to the extremely delicate circuitry.

        2. No, what Aidan (I think) is referring to is digital circuitry built with water pipes and valves. For the valves, think of a solenoid-type valve but controlled instead by water pressure rather than an electromagnet. You can build any circuit you like from something like that, though it’s obviously going to be slow and clunky. But use clear pipes and something (even just a bubble stream) in the water to show fluid flow, and you’ve got a wonderful didactic tool.

          Cheers,

          b&

          >

      3. Pneumatic bistable gates can be made, with no (solid) moving parts, by exploiting the Coanda effect.

  10. Everyone likes a good Goldberg, let alone an awesome one. The pieces seemed to get more elaborate as it went on, too.

  11. What I liked (and said when Matthew tw**d it) was the inspired use of spaghetti as an engineered material to lever impacts around the board. Truly, the Appendage gets everywhere.

    1. S E R I O U S L Y work – stopping ! Four minutes’ time of can’t – take – m’eyes – offo’ – this ! @ 7:30am ! I need to be working !

      This person, Hevesh5, using absolutely every single color of domino in her or his spectrum, is — and calls themselves — an artist, a domino artist ! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4e2e9d6xDVQ

      Setup certainly takes as long as artists’ works ! If knockdown takes >four minutes’ time, then setup must’ve taken days’ worth !

      Blue

    1. Try using the blockquote tag.

      [blockquote]Write it like so.[/blockquote]

      Except use less than and greater than rather than square brackets.

      It looks like this.

  15. What struck me is that the contrivance is completely deterministic. Yet an observer cannot predict the action above a low scale relative to the whole.

    I thought the display illustrates very well the conservation law and entropy.

    Also, there is the hint that a deterministic process may appear to be random or chaotic simply because the observer does not know how the process works.

    In setting out these thoughts, I have deliberately avoided reference to causality in the operation of the contrivance and the purpose of the designer as thee are philosophical notions not revealed by the physical apparatus.

  16. There’s a local private science museum that has a magnetic wall and moveable planes and other pieces (OR gates, spinners, etc.) where you can build ball-runs like this. No magnetic balls, though, so they’re much simpler and can’t create some of the tricks shown in this video. In any event, the first time I took my kid there I had to drag him away after two hours.

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