Geomag Blog

That is the question I wanted to answer. We have built a long line  of rods from ceiling to the floor. But it was not enough, it was easily possible to carry ca. 2.6m of rods on one of them. So we have built a basket and filled the basket with balls.

20 balls, 30 balls, 40 balls and still it was possible to grab last rod on top of the basket and lift everything above the ground. Finally, we were able to put 51 balls into the basket and with just one rod was still possible to lift it up. With 52 balls inside, basket was too heavy.

Total maximum weight of basket and balls was 740g on our kitchen scale.

This is my sons creation. He will be seven years old in April and did it completely on his own without any help. Interesting is, that there is no reinforcements inside of this pyramid. He used just some temporary support during building.

228 rods, 85 balls.

My attempt to create connected pendulums. It seems to be quite tricky to set-up several pendulums touching each other with still enough ability to move. Finally I have hooked all four pendulums to just two balls…

After my last post, I got an advice, how to make snow-man a bit bigger and still fit into number of pieces available. I have tried several times but still without full success. Structure on the top is much bigger than before (210 rods instead of 90) and I was not able to make reinforcement stable enough to carry top two balls. The best attempt collapsed just before finishing - before adding last five rods on the top. Unfortunately, I have only picture showing completed second ball.

If completed, this snowman will have 507 rods without any reinforcement.

But anyway, I don’t plan to repeat this construction soon, I will start with something else.

First attempt using additional pieces from Christmas days…

I have  added almost twice our previous collection - 360 rods, 240 balls (10xGeomag Color 60) and 3 packages of pentagons.

Unfortunately, it seems that I still don’t have enough pieces. Currently missing some plastic - mainly squares.

I have started with “big” ball. Such a big ball was not possible to make with only 180 rods from previous collection.

From this point I had to worry about stability of the ball - I had used all squares available, so all squares on the top of the ball remained without any support.

But finally, I have managed to complete first ball. For the second ball, I had to use smaller size than planned - again, no squares.

You can see also yellow rods inside first ball - as a reinforcement, to be able to carry other two balls.

All balls completed, just to add some final touch and snowman is complete.