Scientists and artists want to understand how the eye and brain work together. This device lets you spin patterns at controlled speeds. Blend images. Trick your eye into seeing colors where there are none. Make columns wobble in 3D after the artist Duchamp. Animate birds. Create your own illusions. Experiment with Benham’s Tops and patterns.
A basic vocabulary of movements controls every mechanical device. Leonardo daVinci identified and drew the most important of these. Learn and implement arrangements to control the direction, speed and shape of movement. Invent an artful application for your device. Make your characters work together with a set or series of pulleys to combine movement and meaning.
All creatures live in a web of resources that support or suppress their growth. Learn about ecosystems and create a dynamic model of an insect’s or bird’s world. Suspend a magnetized creature on a pendulum. Add food and shelter (with magnets) that attract the creature and predators and hazards that repel it. The creature navigates a complex and fascinating path.
Study motion by building a spiral track for a marble to follow. Understand gravity, friction, inertia. Do you build from the bottom up or the top down? Make discoveries while creating a fun game.
Assemble and decorate the wheels, axles, chassis and driver of a wooden downhill racer. Then experiment with your creation.. Measure the distance it travels from the end of its track on a ramp. Change the pitch of the track and measure again. A wonderful hands-on exploration of measurement, gravity, friction, and energy.
Our micro-blocks and glue quickly and flexibly construct castles, temples, pyramids, Egyptian or Roman villas or fairy tale keeps. These models capture the exterior form and style of buildings and allow some interior detail. Castles and temples are perhaps the most expressive projects. We can adapt to your needs.
Some examples we have made in the past:
Use the Charles W. Morgan, (a 19th c. whaling ship now preserved at Mystic Seaport) as a model to understand the Whaling industry. Learn how and why Whaling Ships flourished in New England’s history from the 1700s until the 1930s. Discuss how Whaling took place, why it existed, and how it diminished.
Build a Whaling Ship with sails, rigging, barrels, and a whale.
A popular project that teaches game design (beginnings, middles and ends), logic (rewards for difficulty), marble movement (caroms, momentum) and creative design (good games must still attract players.) A rare exploration of the work of play. Use marbles, a launcher, hurdles, and more to devise and personalize your own Pinball Machine. Figure out your own rules, scoring, and goals. Play with friends, test, adjust and keep going.
Models organize big ideas for scientists and students; they identify and test questions and are ideal tools for thinking. The Earth/Moon Rotation orrery shows our planetary movement around the sun and demonstrates lunar orbit and moon phases when illuminated with an accompanying light. It also helps explain why seasons take place, the relationship between the Sun, Earth, and Moon and how proportionality can be understood in tangible terms.
Construct a music machine. Hear the logic of Leonardo's mind at work as he invents the first modern robot, an automatic drummer whose rhythms can be reprogrammed flexibly and whose tempos adjust automatically. Invent your own cadences and rhythms.
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