Amazing Tensegrity!

if this photo amazed you, you need to build one of these. this is called a tensegrity. it looks like it's floating in midair, but it's actually balanced using strings. how do you do this? well, let's find out, shall we?

you will need:

wooden sticks

string

scissors

glue gun

to start, let's learn more about the tensegrity. as i said before, it looks like it's hovering in midair. actually, it's balancing on the strings. the middle one keeps up the top part, while the other three balances it. if one of the outer strings try to fall, the other outer strings keep it away from falling. it's actually quite surdy, depending on the materials. our one would be made out of popsicle sticks and strings; it would be tiny, and could probably lift light stuff like pencils, but make that into metal and chains, you could probably lift a person!

first, using a glue gun, make two triangles with the popsicle sticks. be sure to use the glue gun carefully, it can cause serious injury if you make a mistake!

when you're done, make an angled pillar by cutting popsicle sticks. the pillar should be long as half of the tringle's line. make sure to glue the pillar to opposite points of the triangle.

now, we need to put strings in it to balance it. make three pieces of string with the same length(12cm~15cm) and an another piece about 1/4 of the first three. glue the shortest one to each points of the pillars and glue the rest on the 3 points of the triangle. make sure the trianlges face the same way(the pillars is on the opposite sides)

if your tensegrity leans or falls, make sure that the longer string's lengths are the same. if it dosen't work, make the middle string's length is short enough to make the upper triangle "hanged" by the lower one by the pillar.

there it is, your very own tensegrity! if you think this was easy, try out more different-and more difficult-tensegrities.