Marble Machines workshop

Here are photos and video of the marble machine workshops we have done
http://www.exploratorium.edu/pie/library/marblemachines.html

Marble Music

From Karen
I just watched a film about the Eames' 901 studio and glimpsed a clever idea that we might want to try with marble machines.
Imagine a tower of xylophone parts that you could remove and rearrange to play tunes. Theirs was very tall and had an elaborate pneumatic launch, but I think it would be simpler and cooler for our purposes to have the marbles fall into the "tower" from things that visitors construct with tracks.

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/10/the_gravity-powered_xylophones_of_c.html

From Jessica
That sounds interesting! Your description reminds me of a very cool toy I saw once:

http://museumofhappiness.blogspot.com/2008/06/marble-tree-toy.html