TechnicBRICKs: TBs TechTips 32 - LEGO Compass without magnets

Thursday, December 30, 2010

TBs TechTips 32 - LEGO Compass without magnets

New Scientist TV brings us a video that teaches how to build a Compass out of LEGO Technic elements, without using any magnet.
That might sound impossible, but the ancient Chinese worked out how to make it 4500 years ago. An ingenious combination of gears and wheels ensures allows to have a needle on a "pointing chariot" that always points in the same direction as it moves and changes direction.

Find how!...

Like at another example that we saw recently, it turns evident that ancient civilizations mastered the gear mechanisms and maths, much earlier and beyond what we might have imagined!

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