I Do Like Rolling Ball Sculptures,

there is one that we have watched many times, 

in the film Fracture, the sculpture was made by Dutch artist Mark Bischof, it is a joy to watch, and then I heard about another rolling ball sculpture, this one by Ben Tardif who spent three years designing and building an intricate marble machine he calls Marble Mountain,

it has everything- ramps, stairs, slides, a castle, a luge run, a ski jump, a golf course, a bowling alley, and so much more, he says it’s not yet complete, but it’s complete enough that he can turn it on and show us what it does, the video above is a tad long so maybe a second cup of coffee will be needed to watch it, a few facts about the sculpture,

-It has a footprint of 12' x 8' and stands 8' tall

-The material of the tracks and supports consist almost entirely of wood

-Everything is custom-made from materials bought mostly from craft and hardware stores (mainly Michaels and Home Depot)

-The lift is 11 feet long, holds 90 marbles at once, and rotates at 1 revolution per second (60 RPM)

-It takes at least 250 marbles to keep it running without delay, but looks better with 300

-There are 32 possible paths for the marbles

-There are 14 rockers that distribute the marbles onto the different paths

-The first year and a half of construction happened in my apartment before moving to a small warehouse

-The original design was smaller and not as cool, so a redesign took place making it much bigger and morphed into a half-conical shape with the lift right down the middle

-I do know how much it cost to make thus far but even my finaceé doesn't know that number

-It takes just under an hour to set up or tear down Marble Mountain

-Since it is modular, I could remove a section and rebuild it as something else as long as the tracks matched up with the other pieces

you can see more of the sculpture at his Instagram page, great fun.