We, in the Marketing Department of boboli, are all past a certain age. When we were younger, we loved playing marble runs with our friends with blocks and each with their own tracks. So, when thinking about today’s post, we decided we’d teach you how to make a circuit for marbles with recycled materials. Cool, isn’t it?
Materials:
- Scissors
- Paper plates, the ones that have edges that curl
- Tubes of strong cardboard, like the ones from tin foil rolls
- Washi tape or markers
- Sellotape
- A cardboard base, such as the lid of a box that a pizza’s delivered in
- Big lids of food jars, such as the peanut butter jar, and a small cap from a beverage bottle, like that of a juice or milk bottle.
- Marbles
- A hot glue gun
Follow these steps:
1. Prepare the pieces. Use the scissors to cut out the curved edges of the paper plates to create the curved part of the track. Cut the cardboard tube in half across its length to create the final straight. Cut several tubes of different lengths, which will serve as towers to hold the tracks. Decorate the tubes with Washi tape, coloured decorative tape or with the markers. Whichever you like best!
2. Set up a design. Use the Sellotape to provisionally attach the cardboard towers to your cardboard base. Then, attach the pieces of curved and straight tracks to the support towers. Try this out with different heights until you find a circuit that you fancy.
3. Add on a fun finish. Make the track slope so that your marble can roll down. Make the curved track end in front of the plastic cap. The marble will then fall onto the lid through the hole, and roll onto the last part of the track. In the above photograph, a milk bottle cap has been glued in the centre of the lid so that the marble is forced to roll around before it falls through the hole.
4. Try out the track. If your marble flies off the circuit, slow down the speed of the track by reducing the tilt of the slope. You can do that by using shorter cardboard towers or towers of a similar height. If your marble rolls too slowly, then tilt the track down some more by using higher towers.
