George Rhoads Rolling Ball Sculpture - Toronto, Ontario
Posted by: 
Metro2
N 43° 43.008 W 079° 20.315
17T E 633835 N 4841760
This elaborate rolling-ball sculpture is located in the Ontario Science Centre.
Waymark Code: WMEK1X
Location: Ontario, Canada
Date Posted: 06/07/2012
Views: 21
The Ontario Science Centre is chock full of exhibits which permit kids a hands-on experience. This sculpture is no different. Kids can launch the balls in several sections of the piece.
This blog website (
visit link) has this to add:
"The highlight of the trip however, if you measure things by the amount of time my kids spent gawking at one exhibit, was George Rhoads' rolling ball sculpture. I've seen these sorts of things before**, but never in person, and never with fascinated children in tow. It's an engrossing conglomerate of moving parts, a smorgasbord of clinks and clanks, and it kept my frenetic youngsters fixated for over half an hour.
Unlike acupuncture, this moving sculpture actually works, over and over again, without any doubt. At six points around it's circumference children can feed balls into the machine, but whether they do or not the central portion of the apparatus continues to function. It's a huge Rube Goldbergian plaything, a toy that operates both independently of, and interactively with, the kids who admire it.
So I whipped out the iPhone and recorded what I could, the results of which can be seen below. The video's a little rough-around-the-edges***, and I know there's no way you could possibly enjoy it as much as a couple of toddlers did, but I'm sure that you'll agree that it's worth admiring.
Reality always is."
Click on the blog's video to watch the sculpture in action.