This ball-moving machine, made out of Lego Mindstorms, gives a Rube Goldberg a run for the money:
This amazing contraption, built by a Japanese Lego enthusiast in 2012, moves one ball per second around a circuit of seventeen distinct modules. Set up in at the creator's home, it took 600 hours to build: that's about 2 months if you work 10 hours a day without a break, and that's a significant amount of space to dedicate in a Japanese home!
It took me quite a while to find the original source video (which has recently been doing the rounds in freebooted form on social media), which led me into a hobby and community I never knew existed: Great Ball Contraptions. There are apparently conventions dedicated to the pastime all around the world, including the annual Brickworld Chicago conference. Records were set there in both 2014 and 2015 for the size of Great Ball Contraptions -- follow those links for even more mesmerizing Lego goodness.
That's all for this week. For those in the US, enjoy the rest of the holiday, and for everyone else have a great weekend! We'll see you back here on Monday.
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