Joseph Herscher is a kinetic artist and a YouTube personality, who specializes in creating intricate Rude Goldberg machines out of everyday objects. Some of his most popular machines are “The Page Turner”, “The Dresser”, and “The Cake Server” which you can see below. Joseph has been sharing his inventions on YouTube for more than 10 years, and you can explore all of them on his official channel. Who knows, maybe he will inspire you to start making fascinating Rude Goldberg machines as well!
Gravity Maze is one of the most popular and recognized products by ThinkFun. The goal of this puzzle/game is to build a 3D structure using blocks and tunnels. The structure should enable a small marble to travel from a starting point at the top to a finishing point at the bottom.
Gravity Maze comes in a large box and includes a plastic 5×5 grid, 11 colorful blocks of varying sizes, 3 marbles, and 60 challenge cards. The blocks are composed of small cubes and contain short tunnels passing through them. They can be positioned on the grid horizontally or vertically, and can also interlock, like LEGO blocks. This allows the solver to design an extended system of tunnels, essentially creating a labyrinth for the marbles to travel through. The challenge cards are split into 5 groups by difficulty, ranging from simple beginner puzzles (involving just a few blocks) to expert puzzles (involving up to ten blocks). Solving each of the puzzles requires careful analysis of the given pieces and all the possible ways in which they can be combined. When the structure is completed, the solver must drop a marble into one of the pieces and watch it find its way to the destination. Testing whether the constructed solution works is arguably the best part of the puzzle and it is what makes Gravity Maze so much fun.
Even though the recommended age for Gravity Maze is 8 years and up, many of my academic friends enjoyed playing with it. I am sure that middle and high schoolers will like it even more.
Here, at Puzzle Prime, we have been always fascinated by magic. We appreciate the amount of creativity it takes to design a magic trick, the immense talent required to execute it, and the many hours of practice needed to perfect it. As long-time fans of Penn and Teller, a few years ago, we were delighted to discover that these all-time greats have started their own TV show. “Fool Us”, soon to be running its fifth season, gathers some of the best magicians around the world and lets them perform in front of Penn and Teller, who are trying to figure out their secrets. To watch the show’s episodes, visit the CW network by clicking the banner below.
Even though developing your analytical and problem-solving skills can help you succeed in life, your personality type also plays a large role in it. 16 Personalities Test is a quick and fun way to evaluate your character, and it is also based on some solid psychology theories. The test is totally free and takes just 10 minutes to complete. To find out whether you are a logician, an adventurer, or an advocate, click the banner below.
Can you draw a brain in just 3 seconds? Probably not, at least unless you use some help from Google. AutoDraw by Google Creative Lab is an AI experiment, which lets you make a quick doodle, then tries to guess what it is, and complete it. It does not always work, but it keeps improving and is fun to play with. Also, it shows the powerful capabilities of machine learning. To try AutoDraw, just click that big orange brain below.
Creative expression, learning, and focusing are some of the most important activities children should be encouraged to practice from an early age. Driven by this idea, Elizabeth Carpenter has published several oversized books that give kids the opportunity to solve beautifully drawn line mazes, color them, and learn interesting trivia, all at once.
The Mummy Mazes Monumental Book contains 28 poster-size mazes based on Ancient Egypt themes, along with explanations about each of the included objects. The Dino Mazes Colossal Fossil Book contains 31 poster-size mazes, depicting various dinosaurs, accompanied by descriptions and quick facts about them. Recently, Elizabeth also published a Mandala Mazes book which is suitable for older people looking for fun and relaxing activities as well. In terms of difficulty, the Dino and the Mummy mazes seem to fall on the easier side, while the Mandala mazes are a bit more challenging. After being completed, the mazes can be detached and used as posters, even though we think they look best organized together.
All three books offer great quality, and we would highly recommend them to any maze enthusiast.
Who says science jokes are not funny? Below you can see some of the best Chemistry jokes we know, along with short explanations to the more obscure of them.
Do you know any funny Chemistry jokes yourself? Let us know in the comment section below.
Helium walks into a bar and orders a beer. The bartender says, “Sorry, we don’t serve noble gases here.” He doesn’t react.
Explanation Helium is noble gas and noble gases do not react with other chemicals.
So oxygen and potassium went on a date. It went OK.
Explanation The symbol for oxygen is O and the symbol for potassium is K.
“What do you do with a sick chemist?” “If you can’t helium, and you can’t curium, then you might as well barium.”
Explanation Helium, Curium and Barium are chemical elements, which sound like “heal him”, “cure him” and “burry him”.
“What’s the first thing you should learn in chemistry?” “Never lick the spoon.”
Explanation Chemists use spoons to mix (often) poisonous solutions.
“Why are chemists perfect for solving problems?” “Because they have all the solutions.”
Explanation “Solution” has two meanings – as in problem solution and chemical solution.
“How can you tell the difference between a chemist and a plumber?” “Ask them to pronounce ‘unionized’.”
Explanation The word “unionized” has two meanings, which are pronounced differently. One of them is “characterized by the presence of labor unions”, and the other one is “not converted into ions”.
A weed scientist goes into a shop. He asks: “Hey, you got any of that inhibitor of 3-phosphoshikimate 1-carboxyvinyl transferase?” Shopkeeper: “You mean Roundup?” Scientist: “Yeah, that’s it. I can never remember that dang name.”
“My teacher threw Sodium Chloride at me. That’s a salt.”
Explanation “A salt” (Sodium Chloride) sounds like “assault”.
“If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the precipitate.”
Explanation The precipitate is a substance separated from the solution during a chemical process.
A conversation between two atoms: “I think I’ve lost an electron.” “Are you sure?” “Yeah, I’m positive.”
Explanation Since electrons are negative particles, when an atom loses one, it becomes positively charged.
“I tried to tell a chemistry joke at school last week. No reaction.”
Explanation Wordplay with the phrase “chemical reaction”.
“Why can’t you trust atoms?” “Because they make up everything.”
Explanation Everything in the world is made of atoms.
A neutron walks into a bar, asks how much a drink costs. The bartender replies: “For you, no charge.”
Explanation Protons have positive charge, electrons have negative charge, and neutrons have no/neutral charge.
“What is a cation afraid of?” “Dogions.”
Explanation A cation is a positively charged ion. This is a wordplay joke with cats and dogs.
“What does a subatomic duck say?” “Quark!”
Explanation Quarks are subatomic particles.
“Why did the bear dissolve in water?” “Because it was polar.”
Explanation Polar solutes dissolve in water.
“What do you call an educated tube?” “A graduated cylinder.”
Explanation A graduated cylinder a tube used by chemists for measuring liquids.
“Two chemists walk into a bar. The first one says, “I will have some H2O.” The second one says, “I will have some H2O too.” He dies.
Explanation “H2O” means “water”. “H2O too” sounds like “H2O2”, which means hydrogen peroxide and is deadly.
Who says science jokes are not funny? Below you can see some of the best Philosophy jokes we know, along with short explanations to the more obscure of them.
Do you know any funny Philosophy jokes yourself? Let us know in the comment section below.
Descartes goes into a bar, sits down, and orders a beer. He finishes his beer, and the bartender says, “Descartes, would you like another?” Descartes responds, “I think not” and POOF! he disappears.
Explanation The most famous quote of Descartes is “I think; therefore I am.”
“How did the solipsist break up with his girlfriend?” “It’s not you, it’s me.”
Explanation Every solipsist believes that they are the only one who is known to exist.
The dean asks the head of the physics department to see him. “Why are you using so many resources? All those labs and experiments and whatnot; this is getting expensive! Why can’t you be more like mathematicians – they only need pens, paper, and a trash bin. Or philosophers – they only need pens and paper!”
“What do you get when you cross a joke with a rhetorical question?”
Explanation The sentence itself is a cross between a joke and a rhetorical question.
A Buddhist monk walks up to a hot dog vendor and says “Make me one with everything”. The hot dog vendor hands over the sausage and bun with all the trimmings, and the Buddhist hands over a twenty. The vendor pockets it. The Buddhist asks “Where’s my change?” and the vendor replies “change must come from within”. A gun then extends from the Buddhist’s chest and he asks again. The vendor says “Whoa, man, where did that come from?” The Buddhist replies “This is my inner piece”.
“What was Nietzsche’s day job?” “Post-man…”
Two behaviorists are having sex. When they have finished, one turns to the other and says, “That was good for you. Was it good for me?”
“How did Kant manage to write The Critique of Pure Reason?” “He made the time.”
Zeno walks halfway into a bar… The masochist said to the sadist “hurt me”, but the sadist said “no”.
XKCD is one of the most successful comics online of all time. Marketed as a “webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language”, it manages to poke fun at all of these in various highly creative ways. Due to its numerous STEM references, XKCD is appreciated especially by geek communities. You can see one of our favorite strips below, a clever joke about classic chess puzzles.
To get to the XKCD website, simply click the image below.
UPDATE: The game Brandscape is not active anymore.
Here is a nice pop-culture puzzle quiz by our friends at Funding Circle. They have created a colorful painting with 60 hidden references to famous brands in it, which you must find and recognize correctly. The puzzle is fiendishly hard but really fun to solve. To play it, just click the image below. Good luck!
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