Marbles

In 2011, Walter Mason built the world’s longest marble run out of wooden modular tracks. Now he’s raising funds on Kickstarter for smaller sets of his tracks. The Boa set works with ping pong balls (or similarly sized balls), while the Anaconda works with larger balls.

Marble fanatic Jelle Bakker poured a stream of over 100,000 tiny marbles, bearings, and other spheres into a giant hyperbolic funnel, creating an oddly soothing and hypnotic video that’s perfect for clearing your mind of clutter. Want some more? Here ya go.

After six months of work, builder Ben Tardif is close to putting the finishing touches on his latest marble machine – a miniature version of a miniature golf course. The video goes into quite some depth about the build, but if you just want to see it in action, you can skip to 15:20.

A fun kit which lets you build your own motorized wooden marble machine. It sends a cascade of spheres spiraling to the bottom, then finding their way back to the top for an perpetual loop of marble madness. Available as a battery-powered or solar version.

Denha shows off a mesmerizing machine that’s designed to produce a variety of soothing sounds as dozens of metal spheres move their way through its maze of metal tracks, spinning wheels, and moving stairsteps. It sounds sort of like a perpetual Pachinko machine.

Ever wondered what 100,000 marbles looked like? Marble fanatic Jelle Bakker is back to satisfy your curiosity with a seemingly endless pool of the shiny glass orbs racing through his maze, and soothing us with a wonderful sound that we could probably fall asleep to.

Ben Tardif says he’s been working for over three years on the construction of his complex contraption, a kinetic sculpture that sends marbles on a seemingly endless ride through 25 different environments, along twisty roads, down tiny staircases, and even off a ski jump.

From Jelle’s Marble Runs, the YouTuber who brought us the 750ft sand marble course, comes the be all and end all of all marble races. Place your bets as the representatives of the marbling nations compete for all the marbles.

Cars, motorcycles, boats, bikes, runners. We love to watch all manner of races. But we never thought a race between a bunch of marbles could be exciting. Marble fanatic Jelle Bakker set off this surprisingly compelling race across a 750 foot-long course carved from sand.

JelleKnikkers built this fun take on the model railroad, replacing the train cars with about 30 1/2-inch steel marbles. The track is about 200 feet long, and constructed from LEGO components. The glow-in-the-dark marbles at the end are pretty neat too.

Jelle Bakker built this 33-foot-long wooden contraption, dubbed “Marble Tsunami,” through which thousands of marbles roll their way to their eventual resting place. We can only imagine how loud this thing is in person.