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Marble Machines – training with the Explainers
As has become a sort of yearly tradition, we hosted a three-hour training with the new batch of Field Trip Explainers, who will be starting to work on the museum floor in a couple of weeks. This is a...
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Marble machines are coming!
A first-generation marble machine board It is quite fun, but we needed SIZE! At first, it was the marble machine board: a 2′ by 4′ monolith that could be easily propped anywhere, and used by one or...
View ArticleOpen MAKE: marble machines
Well, after all the work we went through to make and install the walls of our giant Marble Machines room, here is a corner of the room being worked on by many visitors over the course of two and a half...
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Order in the disorder
For the last week I’ve tried some different things out to encourage our marble niche visitors to, as they say at Ontario Science Centre, “Clean sh*t up”. While I haven’t yet resorted to partially...
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The Amazing Clean Up Tube
This morning we had a training for the field trip explainers where we came up with challenges in the marble cave, like setting up the marble to bounce off three balloon trampolines, having the marble...
View ArticleA Couple of Marble Contraptions
Thought I’d post two videos of some of the latest prototypes for additions to the marble machine wall. Both of these seem to address some of the challenges that explainers and visitors have identified...
View Articlemarble materials – less is more?
Today I reduced the amount of materials by about half, which still leaves an abundance of stuff but hopefully will encourage people to scavenge and clean up rather than pull more materials out of the...
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marble wall at Explora
Some pictures from Explora’s marble wall. Lots of similarities but with some key differences. For example, this wall is pretty much the first exhibit you encounter once you’ve entered the maze of...
View ArticleMarble Melodies
In the past few months of experimenting with the marble machine fort on the museum floor, we’ve been prototyping various fun elements to add to the basic sets of materials. Ryoko has been interested in...
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Glow Prototyping
On Tuesday, we tested out some new and old activities to try at the After Dark: Glow event on the first Thursday of December. Digital Bling seemed like a good starting point for our explorations with...
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