Victory Is Sweet

And finally, it is finished. The first video is our trial & error phase of the invention, so titled after Thomas Edison's most famous quote (though I'm off by three zeros...). Here we learned all about problem solving, the power of observance, and patience (you can even notice Kath'Ryn's statement about halfway through). Each time the marble seemed to roll off somewhere else, so we spent some time today tweaking and hoping, tweaking and hoping. It got tedious until Iesha finally developed a solution to our greatest problem of the marble rolling off the entire machine, it being in the form of an empty paper towel roll that guides the marble into the plinko board. Then you can see it all comes together.

The last video shows two shots of our machine, one from afar, and another that gives the viewer a more first-person kind of view. Notice all of the fine details, those small pieces of cardboard and splinters of popsicle sticks, we had to place inside each part to ensure the marble's continued movement. It takes time, but the kids definitely found the worth of meticulous, hard work the first time the marble rolled all the way through, and then when each of them got to be picked up by Mr. Chris to send the marble through their own machine.

To imagination.

To determination.

To Newton.

Cheers.