A large gear that can be driven with a smaller gear or a toothed lever. Slots in the gear allow weights to slide along them, subject to rotational and/or gravitational forces.
Toy concept 2 | Toy concept 3
- Weights can be added to the same track or to different tracks for comparison.
- Toy can be oriented vertically or horizontally, so the child can use gravity to help the weight move or not.
- The toy comes with three weights, but only one is installed on a track. keeping a weight on each track is likely to be overwhelming.
- The toy builds intuition for centripital and gravitational forces as well as the concept of inertia.
- A radial track demonstrates pure centripital force, a circular arc demonstrates pure inertia, and the zig-zag curve can likely only be followed using gravity. Other curves encourage exploration of combinations of these forces.
- Nylon or UHMW skids alongside each track will reduce friction acting on the weight, but the complex curves will still demonstrate the principle when weights will get stuck at intermediate points.
Carnegie Mellon University
January 25, 2010