It’s 3:30 in the afternoon on the Friday after Thanksgiving, and some 1,200 people are staring anxiously at a little boy holding a bit of string tied to the trigger of a mousetrap. Tied to the snapping arm of the trap is another string, this one connected to a small piece of wood. Eleven more mousetraps, prepared similarly and with great care, have been arranged in two rows along opposite edges of a folding table. If all goes according to plan, triggering the first mousetrap should begin a chain reaction of flying wood and string, each trap causing the next to fire in rapid succession. It worked at home and at least once during final testing–but now the bleachers and floor of Rockwell Cage are packed with onlookers, and the pressure is on.
As chief instigator and master of ceremonies for this somewhat geeky annual extravaganza organized by the MIT Museum, I feel my heart in my throat as we approach the group countdown that will start the reaction. In just a moment, hundreds of objects will become players in a drama that no one has seen before. It will last but 20 minutes or so and will never be witnessed again as a live event. Stretching out beyond this first table, with its carefully positioned mousetraps, are about 40 other tables arranged in a giant square around the center of the gym. Each is home to an unlikely masterpiece consisting of toys rescued from the attic, pieces of scrap wood from the basement, wind-up and battery-powered cars, marbles prepared to descend ramps made of every conceivable material, dominoes, video cases standing on edge so that they will act like dominoes, entire Lego collections, cups of water precariously balanced over funnels leading into yards of clear tubing, balloons in all sorts of dangerous predicaments, odd pieces of metal chosen for their sonic capacity, and duct tape–duct tape everywhere.
Hundreds of hours of careful and playful deliberations around kitchen tables or on living-room floors have resulted in a mélange of individual chain reactions that have been brought together and linked, neighbor to neighbor, with strings. Kids and parents who have brainstormed, some for weeks and others while their Thanksgiving feast was still digesting, will see their hopes either fulfilled or dashed. Parts that worked flawlessly the night before, or even in the past 30 minutes, will suddenly freeze. I have often wondered if inanimate objects can be spooked by a crowd. The most unlikely of events–a marble winding its way down the inside of a hanging spring, or a real live rabbit in a head-to-head race with a mechanical turtle–will unfold with remarkable precision. For every “hand of God” moment (when the chain reaction needs a little prompting from its creator), there will be a moment of pure grace.
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