Awesome Marbles

There are plenty of kits out there that let you build a tabletop marble run, but Daniel de Bruin shows you how you can build your own marble track using a spool of picture hanging wire, some solder, and a few household tools. Daniel previously built a room-size marble machine as a demonstration of how economies work.

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.

Remix artist William Maranci did a great job combining the warm and inviting sounds of Wintergatan’s musical marble machine with Gorillaz’ track Feel Good Inc. As its musician and inventor cranks it up, Maranci has to fool with the BPM a bit, but that’s part of the fun.

Jelle’s Marble Runs kicks off a new racing series in which colorful marbles compete for dominance on a twisty and turny race track, as hundreds of spherical spectators look on from tiny stands. So pick a marble, and cheer on your favorite.

It may not play music like Wintergatan’s marble-powered musical instrument, but we still enjoyed listening to the soothing sounds and watching the hypnotic movements of this wooden marble machine, which serves as an example of the modules you can buy from its creator.

These fun-looking marble tracks mount on magnetic surfaces like some whiteboard and fridges, letting you create Line Rider-style courses that take full advantage of gravity. Available tricks will include a spinner, bell, launcher, catapult, a motorized lift and more. Launching soon on Kickstarter.

Puzzle maker Ravensburger’s kits are a blast for kids and kids at heart, letting you easily assemble fast-moving and complex marble runs. Modular components encourage experimentation, and include loops, magnetic cannons, and other tricks. The starter set comes with 122 pieces, while we’d go for the 240-piece XXL set.

Scott’s Marble Runs knows a thing or two about making really long tracks for his marbles to zoom down. This time, he created an epic, multi-story run that has dozens upon dozens of loops, and relies heavily on gravity to make it work. Nice catch there at the end too, Scott.

Marble fanatic Jelle Bakker poured a stream of thousands 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. Not enough marbles for you? Here ya go.

Australian artist David Morrell bends metal wire to form roller coaster style tracks, on which marbles spend their days rolling round and round in a perpetual loop. His kinetic sculptures are available in a wide variety of sizes and shapes, and he accepts commission work.

Marble fanatic Jelle’s latest build is an impressively complicated marble run that was inspired by theme parks. It features 30 “attractions,” with lots of twists, turns, loops, tunnels, and more. Any given marble can take up to 3 minutes to work its way through all of the rides.

5MadMovieMakers used some fun video tricks to keep the steel marble in this clip perfectly centered as it makes its way through a twisty, turny Quercetti Skyrail roller coaster track. Try playing the video a second time with your finger on the ball.

Jelle’s Marble Runs shares a hypnotic look at a lengthy marble machine that sends 11,000 marbles cascading through ramps, tracks, teeter-totters, courses dotted with nails, and culminating with a tray that releases a flood of 10,000 marbles at once.

Marble and domino master Kaplamino made this short and fast-paced marble maze with the help of rubber bands. He says he failed around 40 times because of the unpredictable nature of the rubber bands, but the result is more than worth it.

DoodleChaos made budget versions of basketball trick shots using wood, marbles, string and other small objects. It starts out simple, but quickly becomes more and more complex. The ball bouncing on the rolling cylinder was nuts.

Need to chill out? Hit play, and fill four minutes with a soothing journey along an extremely long and complex track, constructed by Scott’s Marble Runs. If you prefer music with your marbles, there’s another edit accompanied by Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.

Marble and domino enthusiast Kaplamino’s latest creation is an impressive tilted maze. The most entertaining parts are the ones where magnets, small catapults and other objects fling the titular marble through the different parts of the maze.

Tinkerer of things DoodleChaos set up a maze of Jenga blocks, dominoes, sticks, magnets, and other bits and bobs, and precisely placed them such that a series of ball bearings dropped into the them syncs up perfectly with Tchaikovsky’s Waltz of the Flowers.

Fashion brand COS teamed up with the awesomely-named Snarkitecture to build an epic marble track in Seoul, Korea, consisting of over 1300 feet of suspended track, on which white glass marbles roll. The ride culminates with each marble ending up in a massive pile.

Pocket83’s marble sorting machine uses two bars that get slightly wider apart, such that rolling marbles over them will cause smaller ones to fall earlier than the larger ones. Not only does it make a soothing sound, it also does a great job of visualizing the bell curve.

Vietnamese shop Wood Marble Machine shows off one of their super cool kinetic toys, a modular machine which sends dozens of marbles rolling around in perpetuity. It looks like you can even order their machines, though we’re not sure if they ship internationally.

Marble enthusiast Murmiland posted this immensely satisfying video of a single marble which sets off an avalanche of over 2,600 others as they head downhill on a path towards a wall made from building blocks. Murmiland, TEAR DOWN THIS WALL!

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.