Geomag Blog

How much you can carry on one rod?

kockopes — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 20:57:36 +0000

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.

Pyramid

kockopes — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 22:56:22 +0000

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.

Connected Pendulums

kockopes — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 14:36:26 +0000

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…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYNERqT4vhU

Gauss Rifle

kockopes — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 22:54:00 +0000

I have tried to build this using Geomag magnets and balls. Track is also necessary, so I have borrowed wooden track of my children.

It seems that Geomag is not very good for construction of Gauss rifle, one problem can be with different size of balls and rods . If the size would be the same it would probably work better.

I have used just two rods, 7 balls, wooden track, piece of paper between rod and wooden track (to put middle of the rod into the same height as middle of the ball in the track) and sticky tape to attach paper and rods to the wooden track.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSnhQnSWg5I

Collection update

kockopes — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 14:30:18 +0000

Just a small addition - I have tried to buy some more squares, but they are almost everywhere sold out… I have managedto find and buy only one small box of combined panels… So new colors available - yellow diamonds and green triangles. I have also updated Geomag Collection Generator, so it now works with all kinds of pieces I have.

Electromotor

kockopes — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 23:30:29 +0000

Today, I want to show you, how to build a simple electromotor using your Geomag (and few addittional parts).What you need:

8 rods (7 in one color, 1 in another)
6 balls
a piece of wire
a battery (AA battery or similar will be enough)
a knife

Prepare piece of wire about 10 cm long with both ends skinned off.

From Geomag pieces (8 rods and 5 balls), build a small pyramid with all rods on the bottom in the same color. One different rod will help you to see movement. You also want to maximaze magnetic power, so all rods connected to the top of the pyramid should be with the same polarity (if you remove ball, each rod should repel all others).

Than, add sixth ball to the top of the pyramid and connect that pyramid to the bottom of battery. Hold a battery in your hand, connect one end of the wire to the top of the battery and second end to the ball which is on the top of the pyramid.

You should have something like that at the end.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yyxv0JL0lxU

Be carefull, wire can become quite hot after a while, you may want to wear gloves or otherwise protect your skin…

Original idea comes from http://www.supermagnete.de/, I have replaced their super-magnet with Geomag pyramid…

Snow-man II.

kockopes — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 11:52:16 +0000

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.

Collection Update

kockopes — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 23:35:32 +0000

Christmas was very good for the collection. Huge addition. Number of rods, the most important part, tripled. So new collection image is necessary.

It should be enough even for bigger projects

(some pentagons don’t have the right color, I will change it soon).

Snow-man

kockopes — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 23:24:53 +0000

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.

Rods:	417
Blue: 174 pcs, Green: 132 pcs, Red: 57 pcs and Yellow: 54 pcs
Balls:	161
Weight:	3.457g

How to start?

admin — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 13:09:47 +0000

Go and buy some Geomag, of course…

And after that, you can create a picture, displaying what you have bought. Like me.

And you can try to build something. Like a pyramid or Eiffel tower or electromotor…