It's coming, it's coming...
... it's going, it's going.
But seriously, in my idle time I've got plans to build a Rolling Ball Sculpture. You might also know them as "Marble Coasters" or "Do Nothing Machines." I've developed a new ball elevation mechanism that hasn't been seen before, and I have a few other ideas to make it unique. Below is an animated .gif I made with a ray tracing program. (I have a Quicktime movie version that isn't nearly as posterized, but it's larger).
Marbles are fed in at the green tube, and the combined action of the slide (Red block) and the blade (blue block) move marbles into the red output tube, and force them up. The lock marble (blue tube) is extra insurance against the slide moving to the right before the marble is pushed up. The red tube extends to the top of the sculpture where marbles get dumped into a series of ramps and tricks. The input doesn't need to be a tall tube, I just rendered it that way.
Hypnotic, isn't it?
I've also toyed around with ideas for Public kinetic sculptures, possibly using undrilled bowling balls. That, I think, would probably end up being a year's worth of my time, to do it right. Public Grants, anyone? That'll probably have to wait until I've done a few for real.
