High-Tech Hands-On Learning with a Marble-Powered Computer
Turing Tumble and TLC are proud to offer technology to make your Makerspace and STEM programs come alive.
Computers are full of ingenious logic and astonishing creativity. They’re everywhere, but most of us don’t understand how they work. Turing Tumble provides a way to peek under the hood of computers: the logic isn’t hidden inside a computer chip, it’s right there in front of you, no electronics at all. By placing simple plastic parts onto a mechanical computer board your students build their own marble-powered computers. This high-tech hands-on, STEM-based learning tool builds logic, critical thinking skills, and fundamental coding concepts. Kids, teens, and adults find it fun and engaging to build little computers that guide marbles down the board in mesmerizing ways, and they’re surprised to see how smart plastic and marbles can be. The Turing Tumble has a surprising amount of depth: users build real mechanical computers, able to do anything a regular computer could do (if the board was big enough).
Turing Tumble is unlike anything else out there. It actually lets students see and feel how computers work. It lets them code without getting bogged down by language syntax, and it doesn’t require a phone or tablet to operate. It’s perfect for your Makerspace and STEM programs.
Turing Tumble comes with 105 parts:
- 1 game board
- 1 game board stand
- 30 ramps
- 10 bits
- 8 gear bits
- 6 crossovers
- 4 gears
- 3 interceptors
- 1 presser
- 20 red marbles
- 20 blue marbles
- 1 puzzle book
Turing Tumble comes with a book of 60+ puzzles. They start out easy and become steadily more challenging. Each puzzle leads the player to discover new concepts that can be applied to more complicated puzzles later on. The puzzles are woven into a 20-page comic story, beautifully illustrated by Jiaoyang Li, where each puzzle brings Alia the space engineer closer to rescue from a seemingly deserted planet. Jiaoyang is a senior at the University of Minnesota, majoring in both art and computer science. This will hopefully be her first published artwork.
