Lighted Newton’s Cradle

Fun & Games Science
Lighted Newton’s Cradle
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Neat idea from Instructables user Random_Canadian, whose mini metal lathe and homemade plastics extruder we have recently featured.

His take on the classic physics toy uses five glass marbles, each illuminated by an attached LED and suspended by the wires that power it. The LEDs have been ground flat on their tips, and attached with cyanoacrylate glue to small, matching flats ground on the marbles with a rotary tool.

6 thoughts on “Lighted Newton’s Cradle

  1. Bill Griggs says:

    That would be even more interesting if each sphere only lit when struck by the preceeding sphere.

  2. nemal says:

    Pretty cool. Can you make sure the balls go on forever like the actual ones

  3. prithvi says:

    Pretty cool. Can you make sure the balls go on forever like the actual ones. Nice going.

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I am descended from 5,000 generations of tool-using primates. Also, I went to college and stuff. I am a long-time contributor to MAKE magazine and makezine.com. My work has also appeared in ReadyMade, c't – Magazin für Computertechnik, and The Wall Street Journal.

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