STRAWBEES - dream BIG, build BIGGER!

Strawbees, a fantastic prototyping toy for makers of all ages. Build huge mechanical objects from standard straws and cardboard!

Strawbees is a construction kit based on one simple unit that lets you connect straws to each other. You stick a Strawbee into the ends of a standard quarter inch (6mm) straw to make struts and then connect them with another Strawbee.

It's a wonderful system for trial and error construction and allows you to do a lot of things impossible with other systems.

With the Strawbees you can build everything from mathematical shapes like the platonic solids to mechanical birds, claws, or even huge animated snakes.

Just come up with an idea and start building, or simply start building and see where you end up. With the Strawbees you can always modify things as you go, add straws, cut straws, or add new connections to get a stronger, more flexible or bigger construction.

The claw above is made by searching for crabs claws on Youtube and image search on Google. That was enough to reverse engineer a claw with the strong muscle being a human hand and a rubber band for the weak opening action muscle.

Besides connecting straws the Strawbees can be used to connect cardboard. This means you can build large scale mechanical objects from cardboard with the same pieces you use for the straws.

These kickstarter kits are in an early stage and will not feature any instructions, instead we are going to post instruction videos on already available video sharing and instruction platforms. But the best part is that you don't really need any instructions to get started, just look at a mechanical object and try to reverse engineer it. We can't wait to see what you build!

The Strawbees act as a pivot point and as a connector to join straws. Take a quarter inch straw, add Strawbees to make a strut. Continue adding Strawbees to get as many legs as you want in the vertices.

Connecting cardboard is as easy as connecting straws, just make a hole with a regular pencil and then join them with Strawbees. If you run out of straws, you can always find some cardboard to build huge objects with. The standard Strawbees connects two normal layers of cardboard, but maybe you can figure out a way around this.

 

A lot of food chains seem to provide excellent Strawbees Construction Tubes!

We have let kids from the age of five play with the strawbees and have found it suitable not only for them but for makers, engineers and creatives of all ages and fields.

Actually it seems to appeal to anyone who wants to build big flexible structures, and who doesn't? We had a great time at M.I.T. where we had an afternoon workshop full of open ended construction play.

Strawbees are great for imaginative play, why not make a strange dog shaped thing? Or go high tech and construct a flex sensor controlled mechanical finger?

All pieces are connected with strawbees, even the servo and lever. There are always many different of ways of achieving the same thing and it's a truly open ended construction kit. It is also very hackable as you can modify the connector with a regular pair of scissors.

This combination of flexibility and iterative construction makes Strawbees perfect for fun and engaging STEM education activities at any level, from preschool to university engineering studies of both statics and dynamics. One feature for the higher studies is that the straws are weak enough that they bend under pressure, which makes it possible to visually inspect structures you have built to see how the applied load is distributed up until the breaking point. We think science education should be fun and believe this system really allows you to play your way to knowledge.

We are also co-founders of the global initiative www.kidshackday.com where we combine programming with construction activities and the Strawbees offer a great way to get things out of the computer into the real world in a large scale. The constructions are so light weight that a simple micro servo is enough to control even the biggest structures.


To help us get this out to more people, and let you get your hands on them before everyone else wee have devised the following fantastic pre-launch Strawbee kit rewards. The retail version of Strawbees will not be available until this fall, so be part of the beginning of this new toy and help us make it even better with your creations!

NOTE: WORLDWIDE SHIPPING INCLUDED IN KIT PRiCES!
(except for Infinite Kit and workshops)

When we designed the Strawbees, we didn’t really know exactly what we were doing. It was when our DIY clothespin was used as a construction toy by kids in India we figured that maybe we should try designing a real construction toy.

Our goal was to make a connector everyone could afford that could be made using commonly available scrap materials and preferably in one of our manual die cutting machines from Accucut.

One day at a public workshop at the Science Center Universeum in Gothenburg the organizers asked us if maybe we could come up with something smarter than the fragile connectors they had been using for some maths activities, a fully proprietary system with proprietary straws. That's when we started playing with regular straws, and found that the quarter inch straw is one of the most common dimensions.

All of a sudden this little thing appeared and after some tweaking we had developed what seemed to be the lowest common denominator for the joints of most polygon structures. We had to try building a geodesic dome.

Since then we have been trying it out inhouse, modifying it a couple of times and we have made four different tools and thousands of prototypes.

We have done test runs at five schools here in Sweden and more than five science centers around the world to make sure it works.

 

Built by a nine-year-old at Oslo maker fair. Note the visible stress in the lower pyramids!

We have also tried the Strawbees at public workshops and visited NY Maker Faire where we got a lot of positive reactions but most importantly young maker Chris Hodges came up with the brilliant name. A lot of people wanted to get their hands on them, but we weren't ready back then. Now we feel it's time to let it out into the world. We need your help!

To make this into the toy we want it to be, an open source construction kit available to all kids, we need your help.


First we need help to cover the costs of a large scale production, with big expensive tools, both for the Strawbees and also for a nice toy store worthy packaging.


The second and even more important reason is that we want to involve you in making and spreading construction ideas. We feel this is only possible if we keep a toy open. At the same time an open hardware project in the toy industry as simple as the Strawbee is much harder to finance so we figured why not team up with you from the beginning!


Our goal with the Strawbees is an online evolution of ideas and constructions where users build on or better each others ideas. Having this in mind, what better users to start with than the people on Kickstarter?


A stretch goal if the project gets successfully funded would be to have a part of the site featuring an evolution tree where we can post videos/instructions into a hierarchy so we can follow the development of ideas through time. If you know how to achieve a site such as this and feel inspired you are very welcome to contact us!

During the kickstarter we will develop the prototype packaging to suit the production sheets of Strawbees. Production tools will be ordered immediately after a finished kickstarter ends and we will get the production set up for when they arrive. We will pack & ship continuously during the production so shipping will be spread throughout April.

Risks and challenges Learn about accountability on Kickstarter

We have a couple of successful product launches behind us such as www.ass-savers.com but are still a struggling startup team and have never attempted to get into the very tricky business of making educational toys so we have some issues to address.

We are confident about reaching the march launch with a custom prototype packaging, but the big organization that is needed for instructions and a massive world wide launch is not there.

We have three years experience with production in PP sheets so we have most of the production chain sorted out already, the only challenge is to get as many pieces per sheet as possible but still have the machines cut trough cleanly. Worst case scenario is having to modify the tool to suit the machine we use which could delay us up to a week, but it would still allow shipping within the set schedule.

The second issue is to be able to pack & ship the product efficiently, which really is the biggest unknown and affects the total amount of pieces in a kit. Hopefully we have done our research and sorted this out, but it's the first time we are doing this many pieces per kit so we are on our toes ready for tweaking this process.

ORIGINAL: Kicstarter

Tribute to Imagination True Colors V3a

ORIGINAL: Dominique BOULAY

This video is a pale copy of TRUE COLORS PRESHOW by KODAK which was presented few years ago in most DISNEYLAND PARC.

(EPCOT, PARIS ...)

The original text and soundtrack were finding on many Internet Site.

The soundtrack is a specific version of the song "True colors" of Cindy LOPER. 

Pictures and effects using are not exactly the same as the original show. 

The source of pictures are from WallBase.cc and some other internet site. 

Not having found on the Internet the original good quality video, it is what motivated me to create this new version.

You Only Need an Idea and Imagination: Why Kids Should Do Science Research

ORIGINAL: GOOD IS

Meghan Shea is a finalist in the 2013 Intel Science Talent Search, the nation’s most prestigious high school science research competition.

"Well, the sky just, like, hugs the plane and picks it up and it goes in the air and that's how it flies. Like a spaceship," said one particularly precocious first-grader, waving his hand in the air so vigorously that he almost fell out of his chair.

Suddenly, 15 other hands shot up, the owner of each desperate to share his or her personal explanation of how a plane flies. The enthusiasm in the room was palpable—surprising considering that the kids had already endured a long school day.

I'm currently a senior at Unionville High School in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania and each Thursday, I head to a nearby elementary school to assist with Science Explorers, an after school science program. That week, we were making paper airplanes out of different materials to see which could fly the farthest. The week before, the room was filled with both literal and figurative light bulbs going off as we built parallel and series circuits. After getting especially excited about separating salt and pepper using a static balloon with a couple of fourth-graders, I realized that in terms of science, I am still very much the same 5-year-old explorer I used to be, reveling in the motion of anthills, strange plant specimens, and tide pool creatures.

I had always viewed my experience with science as entirely progressive. The more classes I took and textbook definitions I remembered, the more I would understand about the world around me.

And then, I realized that my path was not quite so simple.

Last summer, I headed to Texas Tech University for seven weeks of independent research through the Clark Scholars program. Knowing my interest in environmental research, my mentor, Dr. Michael San Francisco, suggested that I design a water-purification device out of household items that would be more effective than anything currently on the market.

After reading about engineering marvels like LifeStraw and the Life Bottle, my first thought was, I am a 17-year-old with no experience—you must be joking.

As I continued to read, I learned about the seeds of the Moringa oleifera tree, which has been previously studied as a coagulant for water purification. Essentially, a protein in the seed causes all the particles in dirty water to clump together, making them easier to filter out. Inspiration had taken root. I decided to work toward creating a filter out of household items built around the seeds.

The field of water purification has been mainly focused on technological advancement: creating fancy new filters and manufacturing brilliantly engineered devices. But, in my opinion, this impressive technology will never make potable water a reality for the people who need it most: those living in impoverished regions without access to such sophisticated resources. So, I took a step in the opposite direction. In tests, my prototype lowered the levels of toxic E. coli bacteria in water by as much as 99 percent. This new filter may one day allow those in impoverished areas to clean their own drinking water using readily available materials.

My research, which led me to become a finalist in the Intel Science Talent Search is all about moving backward—using what we already have to achieve what we want to achieve. I think a similar mentality can be applied to the entire research field. There's a certain brilliance in the way kids approach scientific problems that often gets lost before adulthood, buried under years of textbook learning and terminology. Students who aren't even old enough to drive are already making scientific discoveries that rival those of professionals.

Jack Andraka's pancreatic cancer test is 168 times faster and 26,000 times less expensive than what is currently available. Also, he's only 16-years-old.

Amy O'Toole co-authored a paper on bumblebees' ability to learn different spatial configurations of color that was published in the prestigious Royal Society journal Biology Letters. O'Toole was 10-years-old at the time. Her co-authors? Her primary school classmates.

Yet all too often, I talk to fellow students about research and hear a stream of self-deprecation. "I don't have access to the right resources to do research." "I have no idea what to do." "I'm not smart enough."

None of that is true! Student researchers hold the key to many important innovations, proving that you don’t need a doctorate or a professional laboratory to contribute to science. All you need is an idea and an imagination—both overwhelmingly abundant in kids and young adults.

Those first-graders' description of the sky "hugging" the plane may not be the textbook definition of lift, but to me, it makes perfect sense. So, if you have an interest in science or a crazy new idea, pursue it! Design experiments, read papers, email professors, create makeshift basement laboratories (with parental permission, of course!), talk to teachers, spend time just thinking, and explore what you love. Don't let your doubts and fears and false sense of inadequacy get in the way—you have all the tools you need to change the world, embrace it!

Meghan Shea is a finalist in the 2013 Intel Science Talent Search, the nation’s most prestigious high school science research competition.

Click here to add encouraging the students in your life to pursue science research to your GOOD "to-do" list.