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Let's Invent! Episode Six: Chain Reactions with Strawbees and Makey Makey

April 28, 2020

This week on "Let's Invent!" we teamed up with Strawbees to create chain reactions with everyday materials from home. Both Lindsay and Colleen were inspired to tinker with chain reactions at the start of the "stay at home" orders around the world because of a Twitter idea-spiration from The Tinkering Studio

We found the #RoundtheWorld_ChainReaction Challenge to be a great encouragement to keep learning through play at home. It's also a fun way to connect your ideas with the global community!

So grab your Makey Makey, a Strawbees set, and some household materials and join our silly and fun chain reactions below!

Lindsay's Track

She built a track with the classic Strawbees rollercoaster run using a ping-pong ball to roll with enough built-up energy to knock an aluminum ball down the pachinko form board to close a switch with the aluminum foil wires wired through the straws of the board. The aluminum ball was wrapped around coins inside, to create more weight for better contact of the aluminum foil switches to the ground. When the aluminum switch was closed a different sound played to represent a different random event each time in the Scratch animation. 

Here are some of the resources you can use to start building a track like Lindsay's example.

Colleen's Track

Colleen gamified the chain reaction by having her kids use a Strawbees grabber connected to Makey Makey to start a timer in Scratch. When the egg rolls into the egg drop, it stops the timer.  

 

 Some resources to get you started playing with these chain reaction elements:

Erik's Track

Erik's track definitely showed the high ceiling example of chain reactions! He made so many elements, we aren't sure we can share them all, but here are some project ideas to help you build some of them!

 

Resources Shared

This was a super active chat! It's one of the most fun reasons we love doing these webinars and live shows at Makey Makey. Here are a plethora of resources mentioned during the webinar.

 

 

For More Strawbees Inspiration

 

 

Upcoming Webinar!

Our next webinar will be in May and will feature a mashup of Makey Makey, Micro:Bit, and Scratch. Katie Henry and Colleen will share their ideas for creating gesture controlled wearables! A sign up link is coming soon! Make sure you are signed up for our newsletter catch the registration announcement!

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