Marble Puzzle
Part of Exhibition: Mind Benders
Topic: Physical Sciences Subtopic: Motion & Forces
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Case Study
of an Exhibit
by Kathy Krafft
Published on April 24, 2007, Modified on August 05, 2009
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Museum: Sciencenter Focus: Science
People who worked on this: Eric Poysa, Tom Fisher-York
My role: Coordinated group of volunteers who made ~20 puzzles.
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Description and goals
A puzzle you can make for just a few bucks. Start with the two marbles down. Can you get them both up?
We put together an in-house exhibition with about 20 different table-top puzzles. We were unsure if visitors would be frustrated by not being able to solve all of the puzzles, but it was a big hit; very few asked to see the answers. Some of the puzzles were more along the lines of tiling, so there wasn’t one solution.
We still rotate some of them onto the museum floor; adults particularly enjoy them while their kids spend long times at some of their favorite exhibits.
HINT: this does not involve fussing and balancing the exhibit. There is an elegant solution you can figure out without having the puzzle in hand.
There are a couple of great puzzle books we found at our public library. “Creative Puzzles of the World” is one good one.
Exhibit Opened: 1997
Location: Ithaca, NY, United States
Estimated Cost: Less than $5,000 (US)
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