Marble Run

Challenge yourself and make your own marble run at home!

You will need:

• Cardboard tubes — such as kitchen roll tubes, toilet roll tubes, wrapping paper tubes, tin foil/cling film tubes.
• Scissors
• Tape — we used masking tape, but other types will be suitable.
• A marble — if you don’t have a marble, another small ball will do, maybe a bouncy ball or a spherical piece of blue tac!

Method:

• Cut a selection of your tubes in half horizontally. Don’t cut too many, you can always cut more later on!
• Choose where you are going to stick your marble run — we used our garden fence, but any relatively flat surface that the tape will stick to will do.
• Start to plan out the start of your marble run and stick on a few tubes. Use your marble to test out if it works. If it does, carry on! But if it doesn’t, you will need to make some adjustments!

• Continue your marble run until you have either used up all of your tubes or ran out of space! We continued our run down to the ground and put a container at the bottom to catch the marble.

Challenge yourself!

You could time how long it takes your marble to complete the run. Can you work out how to adjust the run so that the marble travels slower?

Hint — think about when you are riding a bike down a hill, compared to riding on the flat — when would you travel fastest/slowest? This will help you consider how to change your marble run.

Compete against a friend or family member. Give both of you the same amount of cardboard tubes and a roll of tape. Who can make a run in the quickest amount of time? Who can make their marble travel the slowest?

Enjoy!