Kaplamino ChainReactions

06/11/2020

A chain reaction machine with only toilet paper tricks !
Watch the fails here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qjLG9EuA5U

As toilet paper has become a meme in this quarantine, I thought it would be fun to make a chain reaction with it to spend time. First I had to go out and buy it, and be judged by people... But I took the packs one by one every day and there was plenty of it in the store, no shortage because of me haha.
It is difficult to make a chain reaction with toilet paper because they roll unpredictably because of imperfections, and they're all different.

Now let's talk about the tricks :

- Slide on the broom : I had to add some tape on the broom because it wasn't sliding enough otherwise, that's why it's brown. The open book of the ground is useful because it helps to make the broom falling in exact same position each time, so it could hit the book. Fun fact, I used almost all the books available in my flat for this machine

- "Stay home" : I built this trick at the end, because I thought it was a shame I didn't put that message out. It was the trick that had the most failures (success rate ~50%), because the rolling was chaotic and it had to take the right angle to hit the next domino book. I tried to put it in the same initial position each time and the shock to make it start rolling is absorbed by the books so it's smooth and it always goes the same way. When it worked, it was mostly luck x) but I could afford it because the machine was small enough to take risks.

- Toilet pendulums : Yeah, I had to tape the toilet paper sheets to the ceiling with lots of tape. Both had a success rate of 100% but the problem was somewhere else. In order to film the machine, at one point I had to pass between the two hanging rolls without destroying them, even though they were very fragile and there was only 50cm (1.5 foot) between them. One time I smashed the first pendulum while passing, that's why it looks torned.

- Toilet paper that unrolls : my favorite trick in this machine. I used a lot of hot glue and a fidget spinner again ! It was a nightmare to rebuild, if you ever had to reroll a roll like this you know why, it just keep moving left and right so you have to reroll it slowly and carefully, which took me 5min each time.

- The liquid soap : it was an evidence to build this as a goal within the current context. A lot of weight was needed to push it so I had to use a heavy metal ball, which required hot glue to fix everything around so the ball doesn't push the chair. The blue domino line was supposed to give me time to put my hand under the soap but I did it at the very last moment in panic.
As you can imagine it's not possible to rub hands with a camera in one hand so there is a cut, but I tried to make it looks natural and fluid.

Almost all the fails were caused by a minority of tricks (like in all my machines) : the "stay home" and the auto-tilt just before the fan. The auto-tilt failed mainly because of friction that stops the roll, so I added tape to the kaplas, and also early-trigger fail caused by vibration.

For this machine I was out of my confort zone, it was a "classical" rube goldberg with a large scale and large objets, not a tiny marble machine. Also It was hard to film because it moves rapidly and everywhere in the room (floor, table, ...). Also I built this in only 10 days, and not months like I am used to.

03/11/2020

Here's episode 4 of the blue marble!

Like the previous one I used two tables which allowed me to build more and bigger tricks. It is the chain reaction that has taken up the most space in my room since the beginning.

Some information about tricks:

- the slidings white dominoes: this one was so satisfying; the dominoes slide exactly after the marble has passed over them. It looks like a video game when a character walks over a bridge that collapses behind him. But how do dominoes slide? The slope is not steep enough to make this possible. The idea is to pour fine sand under the dominoes and all the way down the slide. With the sand, any object placed on it will slide even with a very slight slope. I discovered this by accident when I was trying to make a trick with sand and the objects, I put on the table always ended up on the ground. To keep them from slipping there are 3-hole reinforcement, the dominoes are placed on them, but when the marble passes, they move a little down, fall from the hole reinforcement and start slipping. This technique required a high degree of precision to be applied at each test. If it was too sensitive, they would fall before because of the vibrations of the previous tricks (like the iron ruler), and if it was not sensitive enough, they would stay at the top without moving. Getting one under control is already hard, but I had the good idea to put 3 of them in a row to make it even harder. On the other hand, when they were well put in the right position, they worked 100% of the time, it's just that the right position was very difficult to find.

- the red car: it's called a "retrofriction car", but I learned it afterwards, in the store I had to ask "you know the car that you pull back and then it goes forward", it took me an hour to find it. At first the car was supposed to go to the top of the table by pushing the ball vertically but the slope was too steep, so I had the idea to compress the marble between a domino and the car, which pushes it upwards

- the fidget spinner: yes, one more. I like the simplicity of this one, only the spinner and the marble, no strings or complicated things, just the weight of the marble that makes the path turn, and it works every time

- the helium balloon: helium is expensive and hard to find. But that wasn't the biggest problem. It is such a small atom that it passes through the plastic of the balloon, which deflates with time. When I inflated it he had enough strength to lift the marble for about an hour. The little trick was to over-inflate it and put a weight with blu-tack to compensate (when it had too much strength it would blow the ball out of the circuit). As a result, every time the balloon lost strength, I removed a little bit of weight, which allowed me to hold on longer with the same balloon. I still used 6 or 7 (I had the capacity to inflate 25). Oh and yes, I used toilet paper for the ramp, because it's light.

- the fan: this is the main trick of the video. All the previous tricks take up little space but the fan takes up the majority of the white table. I wanted a big trick to contrast with the rest and make it even more impressive. This machine was hard to film because you had to alternate between the small tricks where you had to be close to understand what was going on and the large angles for tricks like this one, also the marble goes fast.
This is the first time I use electricity in my machines (and not the last time considering all I can do with it). To start the fan the red marble falls on a button. This button is in balance between "on" and "off" which makes it very sensitive and a small shock is enough to tip it to one side. The fan is multi-use, it is used to make the marble go up with the elevator, and make it jump higher for the 2nd bounce to reach the other black platform. It caused a large part of the failures, not because of the fan, but the jump with the rubber band. The bounce remained a little random and it was necessary for the marble to land accurately, twice.

- coca/mentos : I always wanted to use the famous coca/mentos tricks, now it's done. You can notice that I used 3 mentos glued together because one was not enough (and I didn't test 2 because it cost me a bottle at each test). The first time it put coke everywhere, so I added the container at the bottom of the table to catch the liquid, and since there was the electrical outlet underneath, I think it's was good idea.

- the electric mixer: I couldn't make cakes for a month because it was glued to the table :(

If you read all of this, congrats, you're a true chain reaction fan. I'm going to try to post more regularly but I'm a great procrastinator (I bought the white table for this 4 months ago). The next video will probably be a screen link like Magnets and marble, It has been a long time. It will allow me to have fun with risky techniques that I can't do with one-take machines.

01/11/2020

I didn't post for two months, now you know why ! I present you my most ambitious project so far, blue marble 3 ! I'm out of my comfort zone this time because the chain reaction is taking place on two tables, and with 0 fidget spinners. It is the longest in terms of duration and the one that takes up the most space in my room. I tried to use a little bit of everything like rubber bands, magnets, and elements. I had so many failures that I stopped counting, as always only a few tricks were responsible for the majority of failures, can you guess which ones?

Now let's talk about the tricks!

The beginning is mainly moving tracks tricks, I tried to compile all the ones I knew. You can notice that some are improved versions of tricks from previous videos. For example, the first one is inspired by the first blue marble video, but this version is simpler and more pleasant to watch ( ok I lied I still use ball bearings from "fidget" spinners, is that counts? ). Same thing for the grey track that rolls at 0:38 (and the timing is so perfect with this one). The track that rotates 180° in 3D caused a lot of vibration because of the big domino that falls and could trigger the rest too early, that's why I damped it with tissues.

You may be wondering what the two large metal balls attached to the tape measure are for. Two things, first, they slow down the tape to prevent it from flying away on the final impact, and second, they are used to slide the tape down because of the weight. The idea of using this slide came by accident, I saw that each time the tape measure was sliding down so I thought to myself why not integrate it into the trick. The speed of the slide is very random as you can see on the video, only one hair could stop it. It was very stressful to film thinking, "Go ahead... almost... you're going to make it... please".

The bridge of small metal marbles holds only with magnetic force. I wanted to put 8 marbles but the bridge was then too brittle and the marble destroyed it when passing over it. It was hard to break it in exactly the right place between the 3rd and 4th marbles. I think it is the trick that works in the most unexpected way of the project.

The air loop is very fun. The two main challenges were first to inflate the balloon with exactly the amount of air it takes to make 3 turns of the loop, and then to push a plug into the balloon (a small magnet with exactly the right size by coincidence) with exactly the right strength to hold it well but not too much :p You can see big magnets everywhere to recover the plug and prevent it from blocking a track, it was pretty unpredictable to know where it was going to jump. I couldn't put a large magnet too close because it could stop the two small magnets from getting closer or tear the cap off too soon.

Now let's talk about the red table! And more particularly the fire catapult, which is in my opinion the main trick of this video. I wanted to do it a long time ago! It is a cannon made of a metal tube with a small firecracker inside. I wore a headphone to reduce the sound of the BANG (even if it wasn't that loud). The marble thrown by the explosion hits another fixed metal marble that transmits its energy to the blue marble. This prevents the blue marble from being burned in the explosion, after which it could no longer roll.

The final technique with water is an improved version of my 1st water trick in Blue marble 2. It's better because there's a satisfying bubble sound :) It's the last one because once the marble is wet it doesn't roll much anymore and you can't do anything else.

I hope you will like it !

30/10/2020

This chain reaction is a mix of lots of differents ideas. First, you have of course the fidget spinners because their potential is definitvely endless, combined with 3 elements (air, fire and water) and to spice it up some magnets and rubber bands tricks. I'm really happy because it's the first time I've found a way to use all 3 elements at once (except earth I know, but I can't do anything with it so it doesn't count).

It has only 38 fails caused mostly by the fire trick and the timing trick with the white spinner at the beginning.
The best strategy is to put at the beginning of the chain risky tricks (timing tricks are always risky no matter how careful you are) but easy to rebuild and I put at the end the safe tricks but harder to rebuild (for exemple the water).

- Fire : This was hard to find and it took me a lot of tests to find a way to make it work. I had either too powerful rockets that exploded the spinner making too much noise, or firecracker wicks that were too weak. I had to remove the weights from the blue spinner to make it lighter so that it can rotate despite the low force. The burning wick is beautiful with the black background and the sound is so satisfying.

- Air : the idea itself is cool, use the centrifugal force to release the marbles from the spinner. But I'm especially proud of the technique of plugging the straw with the magnet, by coincidence it's exactly the same size :)

- Water : just a big thanks to the hot glue gun that allowed me to build this complex mechanism.

Now about the yellow spinner launched at high speed with the red rubber band. The main difficulty here was how to release it, because the force on the first straw is very high because of the tension. But thanks to the help to the lever effect, to force on the second straw is much weaker, and it can be easily removed with a steel marble !

Finally I like the fact that the first trick use the orange spinner, and the last trick use the same spinner, because it's still spinning. That's why I lauched it with so much force at the beginning.

27/10/2020

I built and filmed this machine in only one week (40 fails). The rubber bands in the last video gave me the inspiration to do more with those.

It is shorter than usual because I preferred to do few impressive tricks and focus on quality and how well it looked rather than complexity or length. Also because tricks with rubber bands are unpredictable and unreliable.

As you saw I learned from my mistakes and put the most sensitive part at the beginning with the sliding trampoline, so that the vibrations of other tricks can't trigger it too soon

The most complicated trick was the stack marble effect at 0:10 (check https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UHS883_P60 to learn more about it). The spacing between the two marbles had to be exactly the right one for it to work. This trick caused 90% of the fails.

My favorite part and the main idea of this video is as you can guess the loop. It's very satisfying. And what impresses me the most is the simplicity of the launch system, just 2 dominoes and a rubber band. And surprisingly it works almost every time

25/10/2020

Here is episode 2 of the blue marble ! Same concept as the 1st, a big one marble path on my table in one take.
Let me introduce you to the tricks used in this project.

23/10/2020

I already used two fidget spinners tricks in the previous video, but they were very simple. I knew that it was possible to do much better, because this object has a lot of potential for chain reactions and can be used in many different ways. So I made a video with 10 of these tricks, in one shot again. I hope you'll like it :)

20/10/2020

After 3 months of work and probably more than 500 fails, I'm happy to present you my best video ever.
Since magnets and marbles I've always wanted to make a big chain reaction in one take with this 2D style !

It's also a "one marble path" which means you have to follow the same marble for all the tricks (in that case the little blue one.) Because everything is in a tilted plane, the hard part was to find different ways of having the marble riding up along the table (magnets, falling weight, catapult ...). To do that, the marble has to be light. And because everything has to be triggered by this little marble, all the tricks are very unstable. Most fails happened when an element fall down earlier than expected.

I learned a lot about chain reaction, and I discovered the amazing power of the hot glue gun !

18/10/2020

Music : Good For You by THBD https://soundcloud.com/thbdsultan
Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported— CC BY 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...
Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/-K_YSjqKgvQ

This type of domino video is called a domino "screenlink" where each clip is built separately, then edited together to make it appear like one continuous chain reaction. Hevesh5 and I live in different countries, so it was impossible to do it all in one take. Doing this video as a screenlink was simply a way for us to make a collab video together :) The first half the video was built by Hevesh5, then at 1:44 it switches over to me. What was your favorite trick? :)

Subscribe to Hevesh5 : http://youtube.com/hevesh5

11/10/2020

Sorry for 6 months without uploding, I had some problems like a broken camera, and not enough time to build because of studies ...
And now I'm in a small appartement with carpet on the floor so I don't know how I'm going to make more videos, maybe carpet dominoes or RGM on my table ^^
But you have to know that even if I don't post new things, I'm always on youtube and you can send me a message if you want to know something ;)

Ok now let's talk about this video, it's a screen link again because I like that as you know. But with no theme, I just build everthing that come to my mind. Some tricks take me a while to make (the stairs with kaplas, the tape trick, the origami part ...). You can also see some ISM inspiration :)
I hope you like it !

Music : "Spotless Mind" by Indigo Rain : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c39Ut1coEig

06/10/2020

06/10/2020