"Marble Machines" is a new type of construction kit developed by my teaching partner, Karen Wilkinson (Karen), and myself. It encourages kids to mess around with science, art, and unusual materials. Much like a Rube-Goldberg machine in its design and approach, it consists of a three foot by four foot piece of wooden pegboard, standing on one end against a wall or chair, several lengths of curved wooden molding, short wooden dowels, and plenty of marbles.
The kit encourages invention and construction by allowing students to create a wide variety of layouts with ramps and other objects on the pegboard. Wooden dowels, placed in the freestanding pegboard holes, hold up a series of tracks (pieces of molding), in such a way that the marble will roll along the tracks and zig-zag back and forth down the board from top to bottom. All of the parts are separate and removable. If a certain section of the marble track is not working, students can easily make effective adjustments that will work.
The marble machine construction kit also encourages building with unfamiliar materials, and incorporates personal ideas into their designs. The students embrace the freedom to add new materials to, and design new ideas for, their marble machines. Pieces of cork, tag board, masking tape, popsicle sticks and other materials are worked into the design and construction of the marble machines until each represents the idea of the student.