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Watch the Most Amazing Lego Contraption Ever [Video]

Two years ago we featured an incredible video of the Antikythera Mechanism—an ancient Greek computing device found in a shipwreck in 1901—made entirely out of Legos.

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American


Two years ago we featured an incredible video of the Antikythera Mechanism—an ancient Greek computing device found in a shipwreck in 1901—made entirely out of Legos. The Antikythera Mechanism calculated the positions of astronomical bodies with extraordinary precision.

This machine, by contrast, moves little plastic balls around for no particular reason. But, my goodness:

 


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The machine took 600 hours to make and moves the balls around a 31-meter-long pathway. It's loosely associated with the Great Ball Contraption project, a community dedicated to "Lego Technic or Mindsorms creations that all have a single task in mind—moving balls around! That's it. However you want to do this is entirely up to you." This contribution, by YouTube user Akiyuki, was two years in the making, according to his Web site.

via Fast Company Design

Michael Moyer is the editor in charge of physics and space coverage at Scientific American. Previously he spent eight years at Popular Science magazine, where he was the articles editor. He was awarded the 2005 American Institute of Physics Science Writing Award for his article "Journey to the 10th Dimension," and has appeared on CBS, ABC, CNN, Fox and the Discovery Channel. He studied physics at the University of California at Berkeley and at Columbia University.

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