Art Projects Blog: 2007

This was a really fun project to design and build. I've always been fascinated by kinetic energy and such, and wanted to make something that implemented that. I got the idea to do something with falling dominos, but wanted it to be completely automated, so you would get the effect of the dominos falling through transfered energy, but make them repeatedly stand up and fall again.

I used JB Weld (A liquid adhesive) to adhere nuts to the plastic domninos, then adhered nails to the nuts like so.

I then attached the nuts to bolts which are on a long plastic strip. Since the nuts are lose, they act as a hinge so the domino can move freely.

The plastic strip was bolted to a bike rim, so that the dominos formed a circle. The strip also has nail protruding from it to act as stoppers for the nails on the dominos.

Here is what it looks like completed. The base is a 5 gallon bucket, I used a 6 volt electric motor that I bought at Radio Shack, which was way to fast and didn't have nearly enough torque to rotate the arm that stands the dominos back up, so I used a series of K'nex gears to find a good ratio that had the right speed and torque.

Here are the dominos standing.

Here is a close up of the gears. They are attached with 1/4" bolds. The zip ties bound them together so the teeth have a good connection.

Here is a detail. The arm that stands up the dominos is actually a spatula. The only criteria of the project was we were assigned one object to incorporate into the sculpture. My object was a spatula, which made a perfect arm.