Ball Bearing Fountain
from Corey McGuire
I just had a biiiiiilliiiiiooon dollar idea for you fountian. A solid state ball bearing conveyor!!! Based on a rail gun, we may be able to roll balls up hill using electromagneticism!! That way the noise could be perpetual. Thoughts?
Well, if you want to go ahead with this, the idea is yours to incorporate. You have bearings, you have batteries, now all we need is a long, rigid anode and cathode pair (copper tubes?) on which the bearings will roll. Hopefully it provides more force than gravity and friction on a ballbearing rolling up a 30 degree, metal slope.
Steel Fountain
(Lee Sonko) A fountain that shoots steel balls into the air by means of a magnetic linear accelerator. The balls are caught in a trough surrounding the fountain. They flow down to be shot up again.
Inspiration is drawn from many places including the round xylophone here, video (more), and Arthur Ganson's Machine with Ball Chain, and a sense that an automatic steel ball cannon would be fucking awesome. Update: coil guns need to recharge their capacitors between firing... 1 second per shot is very fast. But mechanical means are still an option!
(jfoote adds) A bigger version of this?
centrifugal BB shooter Or how about a pitching-machine type action?
