chain reaction
Maker Faire 2009 time-lapse
Well, now that it’s over, it’s time to reflect on what an amazing ride Maker Faire was this year.
We organized a 3,600 square feet booth, including exhibits, snack activities, demonstrations, prototypes, and two PIE activities: a giant marble machines fort, and an even bigger enclosure where we let visitors build their portion of a collective chain reaction machine.
Photos from the event are coming soon. In the mean time, enjoy these frantic movies: they are two time-lapse movies, each compressing a full day of chain reaction workshop in less than a minute. You will notice the ebb and flow of visitors, and twice during each movie, the crowd building up to watch us set off the whole reaction, and then us taking it all down and starting again. It makes me tired and happy just looking at it!
Day 1:
Day 2:
The big set-offs were web-cast live on Saturday! You can see the archived versions here:
Bowling ball launcher
In the midst of preparations for Maker Faire’s chain reaction collective build, we’ve been tinkering with various ways of having a grandiose finale to the whole shebang, one that would pack a lot of impact, while still being faithful to the materials and aesthetic of the rest of the activity (cardboard, paper, home-made contraptions, household items, etc.). After several ideas and prototypes, we settled on an awesome ping-pong ball launcher, powered by a falling bowling ball. This short video documents some of our prototyping process, as well as the fun we have while developing ideas!
Chain reaction videos: explainer style!
As promised, here are two videos showing the contraptions built by the explainers during their training with us. Cool stuff!
Chain Reaction training
In preparation for the upcoming Maker Faire booth, in which we will be hosting a community-built chain reaction event, we had the pleasure of trying out the activity with the Exploratorium explainers. Due to their busy schedule and the need to have the museum floor staffed, we had to split the workshop in two days, with half the explainers doing the activity on one day, and the other half on the next.
In this activity, we will ask participants to build a section of a collective chain reaction; each section will then join with and trigger the next one, so that at the end of a building session, we will be able to set the contraption off at one end, and it will work its way (flawlessly, I’m sure!) to the end.
As always, the depth of thought and care that this group of educators brings to any activity they participate in shined through, both in the actual construction of the chain reaction elements, and in the discussion we had afterwards.
Now we are definitely looking forward to Maker Faire in a month!
Here are some photographs from both days:
Marble elevators
In a parallel line of development, we are playing around with marbles and chain reaction elements. One of the problems that we’re constantly facing is how to work against gravity. It’s easy enough for a marble to roll down an incline, but how do you bring it back up? Here are two solutions Walter came up with.