Domino Row Builder
This mini ‘car’ automatically builds a domino row with customizable distances between every neighboring dominos.
Materials and Principles: Mostly consisted of laser-cut plastic and wood, this four-wheeled wooden car will be powered by two electrical motors with controllable output power, one for a pair of front wheels, another for the building of the domino row. The row-making motor rotates a wooden wheel within the car with a small wooden stick near its edge, which is confined within a slot of a wooden/plastic brick. As the motor rotates the wheel, the brick is able to move left and right thanks to the stick and the slot. On the right side of the car, there will be a set of dominos arranged like bullets of a gun magazine. A compressed spring at the front keeps pushing dominos to the rear. Then, the domino will wait until the brick to move right, which will push them out of the magazine and place them into the row. The distance of each single domino is determined by the speed of the car–make sure it is not too fast! A single kid over three years old can completely control the car. By making the magazine full and turning on both motors, the kid can just watch it make the domino row!
Safety and Durability: The kid is never able to swallow any car component given all of them are large and hard enough. Since all of its components are contained within its wooden shell, its key components can hardly ‘get injured’ as long as the car is placed on a smooth, plain surface, like on the floor or a table. Make sure it avoids falling or going through bumps. Nevertheless, this domino-row-building car is extremely limited, since it can only build a straight row of limited length, and it cannot turn its direction!