Awesome Chains

The anchors on big ships are enormous and incredibly heavy. While some boats use powerful winches to lower them, some ships let gravity do the work. This short clip shows the incredible force an anchor exerts on its chain as it drops quickly toward the ocean floor. It looks like a metal snake slithering through the desert as it kicks dust up onto the deck.

Unless you’re into that sort of thing, you never want to be on the business end of a whip. After learning how to use a bullwhip, YouTuber Mike Shake wanted to know if making one out of stronger, heavier materials would make the whip more powerful. It’s not as easy to wield a chain whip, but it’s definitely more dangerous.

A while back, we checked out a complicated machine that used LEGO Technic parts to pull a chain around a bunch of gears. That one was built by Brick Technology. Now Brick Machines took the idea and expanded on it with a ridiculously complicated machine driven by a continuous chain built from 1,184 LEGO chain links.

You can build all kinds of interesting machines using LEGO Technic parts. In this video, Brick Technology shows off a series of progressively more complicated machines they built using a motor, a chain wound around gears, and barriers to guide its path. The higher-level machines are truly fascinating to watch in action.