Matthias Wandel is back at it with his wooden inventions, this time unveiling a nifty device he calls the Jenga Pistol. The Jenga Pistol can shoot Jenga blocks out from the Jenga tower so quickly that the layer of blocks on top fall down and do not cause the tower to fall. It’s swift and easy.
He describes the gun as follows:
The pistol works by hurling a wooden captive bolt forward inside the pistol, powered by rubber bands. The bolt has a pin on the front, which protrudes out of the muzzle of the gun by about 2 cm at most. This is enough to transfer the momentum of the bolt to the Jenga block in front of the gun, not unlike how the game of croquet works.
Normally, Jenga is a multi-person game, but if I had a Jenga Pistol, I’d gladly play the game all by myself. I know, I sound like a loser, but this pistol looks fun.
In the video above, you can see Wandel’s wooden combination lock. He explains the details of how the lock works and how it compares to other popular non-wooden combination locks.
The Binary Marble Adding Machine by Matthias Wandel is just extraordinary. It’s a simple 6-bit calculator that’s completely analog, meaning that the entire thing is made of wood and is activated by marbles! There are no actual computer parts to this calculator. You can think of it as a distant cousin of the abacus (but personally, the abacus is boring).
Matthias Wandel explains the machine much better than I ever could, so just watch the video below and be in awe of this magnificent invention.
