The Rolling Ball Web

The Rolling Ball Web is a portal to just about all things marble-ous. There are links to rolling ball sculptures and rolling ball clocks and toys and games with rolling balls, and rolling ball-influenced scientific apparatus, museums, movies, computers, perpetual motion and gumball machines.

"If you haven't seen a rolling ball sculpture," writes David M. MacMillan, the site's author, "then it's both very simple and very difficult to describe one to you. On the simple side: A typical rolling ball sculpture is one where many balls (marbles, billiard balls, ball bearings, spherical things) are raised to some height from which the individual balls follow one or more paths back down, encountering ingenious mechanisms on the way. On the complicated side: no written description is going to explain why it is that most people of any age just stop and watch these sculptures for a long time."

Rolling Ball sculptures are dances of art and technology and wonder and play. Rolling Ball Clocks are Rolling ball sculptures that tell time. And rolling ball toys and games are invitations to join the dance.

The site hasn't been updated in 4 years, so some web-spelunking will be required to get past the dead links. I can almost promise you that making your way to the world of rolling balls will be well-worth the climb, for it's where fun and art and science and technology all play so beautifully together.