Hoody

Let's see: 5 years are 1825 days. Depending on how the leap years are distributed there is +1 or +2 days. So I think he can be found inside a circle of 1827 miles of radius. But maybe he is just running his daily mile and back in a few minutes?

You mean this book? http://www.amazon.com/Marble-Mania-Stanley-Block/dp/0764335502

Nheed some mhore inphut for your scrabhle? Ophiuchus ophthalmology

Great stuff! My favorite is the bouncing experiment (#3). The other two show too less control on the effect and especially the mid-air-hit is so fast that it is hard to see at all. Did you use glass marbles for the bounces or were those rubber balls?

Hi Steve, remembering an (German) article I read some months ago in the depth of the web I had a look to a map and found that Bad Lobenstein is not too far away from Lauscha. In Lauscha there still is glas manufacturing industry. Maybe those marbles "found between floorboards" (35mm diameter needs really big gaps between the boards to disappear by accident!) are just scrap of a production run and just outtakes for they have been of no value for the original manufacturer. Now someone found them and sells as "Dachbodenfund" on ebay. This is just a theory, not a fact. Hoody

Hi Geordies Liggies, as one of the German members I need to tell you, I have no idea what those are or where their origin is. I am less dedicated to collectibles than to build marble runs with today's industrial made marbles. So I can not help you further here. May be if there is some translation necessary for some German sites you found, I can try to do my very best. Youre liggies are really nice, of course.

Do not annoy the squirrels any longer. I heard they will strike back this winter! (sorry folks, I lost the location where I found the original pic)

Neither whid nor hold I found in my dicts - okay, might be some slang?

Surf-cat, yeah

The effect is luminescence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminescence and here the special photoluminescence gives the effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoluminescence especially the flourescence is effective when using blacklight There is a shop around that sells special marbles glowing in the dark a long time after they got lit. I will try to find its URL later, the physical effect in charge here is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphorescence

Hi kbobam, 'hype' we here in Germany use for something that gatheres great attention by broad publicity. For example the Star Wars movies generated such a hype so that everybody wants to buy respective merchandising (or at least some product managers think so). For me this got a little bit to much now having related toys and products advertised everywhere anytime. Your idea to have a marble run through such a thick liquid is something I just did not see anywhere. On youtube there are a few "underwater" marble runs that end up in a swimming pool. I think that slowing down the motion by such a viscous liquid gets them run too slow for most spectators. One property to consider is the viscous drag that might need a very steep slope to have the marbles creeping down the track. Another property is that the lifter device needs to handle getting wet and also needs much more energy to lift a marble thanit needs in air (or water). Both properties could be considered, but there are some effects (e.g. loopings) ruled out 'cause of their velocity needs. Ping-pong balls in air already show some of those effects because they are relatively large comparing their weight. Personally on some tracks I try to get my marbles running as slow as possible (1/2 foot per second currently runs stable) in air but this is quite demanding. Don't worry, I really do not have intends to "back you up" for the idea. Some ideas looking crazy at the first moment might evolve to really cool stuff (and some then ignite a hype ). YellowMarble: Just one thought creeped into my mind while writing the lines above - how about using ping-pong-balls for an underwater run? Their buoyancy (de opwaartse druk ??) requires making everything inverse so the lifter forces them down and they are running below the tracks upward! The driving motor for the lifter resides above the water in air, of course. This run does not need to get large, just the right incredients in a mid size aquarium tank and presented as what it is: a really fresh idea for marble (here more ball) runs. The video clip I would arrange so that nearly the whole time everything looks as usual but to the end zoom out so people see the arrangement and then roll over the camera and zoom in again to show for a few seconds how balls run inversely. Or you do it other way round, whole of the time the correct camera orientation and to the end the roll over and then leading out.

Following hypes that might be gone in a few weeks.

Hi, thanks for link to video and sharing your pics. The marble pusher looks very interesting. I hope that the mechanism will not jam when marbles queue while not getting dispensed. The marble pump is quite simple and the geared motor looks as if it provides the necessary torque. One very fine property of this device is its small size.

Hi kbobam, its not just one monitor, all I use are 'radioactive'. Maybe I am used to darkness since those monitors are the only source of light in my cave ...

Hi himijendrix, from the two pictures I think you have just figured out a valid solution. It seems that there is enough height difference from the pump outlet to the slots of the dispenser(s). If the inclination of the trough (the small well with the holes for the marbles in its bottom) is too low it might be an idea to use a round shape in the corner to change the direction of the marbles. A bare corner will eat the energy of the one direction. A round shape of the wall will conserve most of this energy to the new direction. Try cardboard or a hose there. Or simply lift up this corner - less increase to the track form the pumps mouth, more inclination to the dispensers. I think that to avoid further underruns of the dispensers need to have a certain sequence otherwise the first ones will block the last ones from getting marble supply. You took that into account already? Anyway my latest thought on your trough with the holes in it seems not to be the best choice. The marbles residing in the slots give not a perfect way to the marbles that need to get to the far end dispensers. What about a dedicated lane for the marbles leading to the far end dispenser. All the dispensers closer to the pump receive a flap that opens to reload the dispenser, or closes to guide the marble to the next section. You need one flap less than the count of dispensers and some precise control where to guide the marbles to and thus this complicates your mechanism. Maybe the flaps can be operated by the marbles that are already in the dispenser just by their weight? I think with such a setup you do not need to change the inclination. The idea is to have the marbles run there where the electronics board is residing (maybe below it) and the flaps then give way to the already existing holes. The "marble pump" you use - is it working according to this priciple? http://www.kugelbahn.info/deutsch/pumpe/einl.html(just look at the animation in the upper left corner)

Cool, I need to take this drive!

Great picture. It took me a few seconds to notice but the dim lit cave is visible on my screen without any manipulations. Hope you found your way out.

Quality is not the main aspect for selecting youtube clips. If the start is boring I stop viewing it or just try to find interesting scenes using the slider. So I think making a run is just half of the work. Making the video clip interesting is the other half.

Hi YellowMarble, so first let's hope your competitors do not read here. Something that is large in size will probably be also large in count of marbles. The height could a get problem for safety reasons. Just consider a marble dropping down from several meters. It gains seriously high speed and might cause some injuries when visitors are hit. This thought leads me to the question if you want to build it just for your own purpose and to make the video or if you want to place to an exhibition? What I saw from your videos so far are wide tracks or single tracks, tipplers (is this the right word?) that hold thousands of marbles and then flip over when the last marble arrives, loops and some obstacles, bells and so on. Should the run be a single shot type (all mibs are put to the top manually and then released for descend) or employ a motorized lifter to run 'for ever'? Anyway I think what Steph argues by her idea is to give your run a theme and then build it appropriately. Your "marble fun park" I really enjoyed for its decorations. A tree might be a nice idea. But I think its architecture and the statics of its construction (small at the base and wide at the top) will be a severe problem. What just came into my mind is something that resembles the art of electricity in the early 19th century. A power plant where a generator works, an electrical transmission line and a light bulb. The electrons are imitated by the marbles and there is plenty of ideas for decorations also. Think of blue marbles that symbolize water in a river, running through a mill wheel (american's please correct my wording if I am wrong) driving the generator by a shaft. The generator might be symbolized by a big wheel lifting up red or yellow marbles. They run through transparent hoses along 2 or 3 power poles and then arrive at an oversized light bulb. This light bulb in fact is a series of 4 or even five loops where the marbles need to spiral through. When done they disappear below the floor and get back to the generator. Just an idea for brainstorming. Another idea would be a scale model of a very impressive building with one or more integrated marble runs. I think of the Eiffel-Tower or the Lady Of Liberty or something like this. Or you have an intense look on one of those giant roller coasters. Replace the waggons by marbles. Ever thought of a marble run to be more the strange one? Try bowling balls to get a really big machine. But do not take to many of them, they contain lots of energy when in motion! Okay, my phantasy is galopping away but it is a nice idea to have thousands of small marbles lifting up a bowling ball on its own track. One lift to 30cm or so might take 5 minutes, who cares?

Hi Pete, I just found the clip where a possible solution is shown. It is just a few seconds after the very beginning. Even those guys are using ping-pong-balls they encounter the same problem - and look to their solution: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLhLM1bLIoQ It needs some additional mecahnics, that is the drawback. In general another solution to the problem "wide inlet to single lane out" could be a construction like the roof rail (hope this is the right name for the half pipe collecting all the rain from the roof and guiding the water to its end into the down ward pipe). Take a tilted area and mount such a half pipe shape to its lower edge. The half pipe itself is tilted slightly towards one end. This way it should be possible to get the marbles arriving in parallel lined up to the outlet. The half pipes diameter should be less than twice a marble diameter, from scratch I would try something around 1.5 marble diameters. To avoid a blocking of the downward pipe the half pipe should extend over the edge of the surface. Or you can use a triangular shaped guidance to get the marbles away from the hole. Or you can guide the half pipe end into a hose. This idea could be extended to more outlets. Each outlet receives such a roof rail collecting marbles from a segment of your skew platform. The basic trick is to have the marbles fall down a little bit over the edge and then line up themselves into a single row leading away transverse to the arriving direction. If you find prototypes made from wood not sufficient for some reason, you might try some ideas first with some paper and glue. Best way to find out how marbles behave is to observe them in the construction. Trial and error is also my approach when I am not able to calculate things. Sometimes I create an obstacle just with one of my fingers or putting a heavy weigth into the track. Then I observe what changes and in what way. But even if this looks fine for some minutes there is no guarantee that the issue will not show up once a hundred working hours. To be more flexible I use a construction toy for experimenting. A last hint came into my mind: Symmetry is nice for looking at. Symmetry is a cause for stable configurations of blocking marbles. Asymmetrical construction sometimes cures the problem. Unfortunately I have no idea of an actually available book with a collection of mechanics like in the video. Mine is from 1925 and out of print long ago (and a german print on top of that).

Hi yellowmarble. what do mean by large? Large in size? Large in count of marbles? Large in height?

I like it. Great!

Welcome Steve

Done

Nice idea. More the relaxing type but far better sound than my constructions.