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The Cardboard Carnival

Design & Build a Marble Run

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Design & Build a Marble Adventure

Get Started

You have almost complete freedom to design your marble adventure. You just need to include a minimum of five design elements and one of those elements needs to be controlled by a motor.

You can make a marble run, a Rube Goldberg machine, a marble race, or anything else you can think of. Let your imagination run wild.

We have a tutorial for each design element on our YouTube Cardboard Carnival: Marble Adventure playlist. We will show you how to code a motor, build tracks, and different obstacles.

Design Element Tutorials

Track Elements

  • Marble track
  • Marble tube track
  • Drop-off track
  • Slalom track
  • Corkscrew track
  • S-curve track
  • Loop track

Obstacle Elements

  • Starting gate
  • Peg obstacle
  • Spinner obstacle
  • Stationary obstacle
  • Funnel
  • Multi-track switch
  • Ramps & landing pads

Motor Elements

  • Wire a Servo
  • Code a Positional Servo
  • Code a Rotational Servo
  • Servo Basket
  • Servo Kick Starter
  • Servo Gate
  • Servo Spinning Obstacle
  • Servo control board

Live Streams

Starting January 23 we will host a weekly Saturday live stream at 10:00 am. Marbles will face off against each other in our first ever Marblethon Race Series. Each week will feature a new marble race course. Anyone who attends will earn a prize token and have the chance to win more by correctly selecting the weekly winner. Will your team be crowned champion?!?! Join us and find out.

Zoom Links:

Saturday, Jan. 23

Saturday, Jan. 30

Saturday, Feb. 6

Saturday, Feb. 13

Saturday, Feb. 20

Saturday, Feb. 27

Recordings:

Marblethon Race Series Kickoff (NA)

Tornado Tower Raceway

Drop Zone Raceway

Pinball Peril Raceway

Loopy Launcher Raceway

Marble Meltdown Finale

Mentor Hour

Each week will we host a drop-in mentor hour on Mondays at 2:00 PM to answer any questions you have about the challenge or assist you with your marble adventure. We will also host a mentor hour just for girls on Mondays at 1:00 PM.

We will email all registered participants the Zoom links at least 30 minutes before each session.

Help Form

Got a question and can’t wait for the mentor hour? Use our Help Form. All questions and answers will be posted on our Response page. We will respond to all questions the same day during the week. Someone may have already asked your question so be sure to check our Response Page first.

Help Form
Responses

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