Lego Mania: Making movies, animals, furniture, and microscopes
Issue 3 of The Toolkit, curated STEM activities from Robotics & Beyond.
Hi! I’m journalist Caroline Delbert and this is The Toolkit. Every week, we give you some videos, projects, and products that help kids (and parents) get inspired by science, technology, engineering, math, and creative design.
This week we’re going to talk about Lego bricks. These iconic toys date back to Denmark in the 1940s, when plastic injection manufacturing was new and other materials were still limited by the demands of World War II.
Shortlist:
Ages 5-8: Stop-motion Lego music video (video)
Ages 8-12: Making a zebra with 30,000 bricks (video)
Ages 12-15: Build concrete furniture with Legos (video) (Warning: Bleeped swearing)
Bonus: A microscope made of Legos (video)
The Limitless Potential of Lego Bricks
Last week we talked about how simple, cartoony designs still remind us enough of real things that our brain is able to make the leap. When you build things out of Lego bricks, you’re doing something similar, in terms of creating patterns. Some Lego sets are color-coordinated, but most families I know have a big box of loose Lego bricks in all colors. If you make a house shape, a square with a triangle on top, people will know it’s supposed to be a house even when it’s in bright different colors.
Today we’re going to look at three different videos of people building cool things with Lego bricks. One is a classic music video where the director, Michel Gondry, used stop motion animation to illustrate the entire song — thankfully it’s a short song, because stop motion animation requires a ton of work and patience. Next is a huge life-size zebra made from only black and white Lego bricks, and you can see how much closer to reality it looks compared with the tiny Lego band members. Finally, we’ll watch some people try to build furniture out of Lego bricks and concrete.
We’d love to see your Lego projects and include them in our next newsletter. Send any photos or descriptions to toolkitnewsletter@gmail.com. Are there any specific challenges that your kids have enjoyed?
Ages 5-8: Animating a stop-motion music video (2 min)
French film director Michel Gondry has made some full-length movies, including Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. But he’s also made over 100 music videos and short films, including for the White Stripes’s first popular single. The child at the very beginning is Gondry’s son.
When you watch this video, think about the shapes and colors that the director used—showing us an entire “person” playing the drums or guitar by using just a handful of Lego bricks, then using different shapes to make a close up of a hand or face. If you stop the video, sometimes what you see doesn’t look like a person or a face at all. You have to see what comes before and after and play it all together to get the full effect.
Challenge: The app Stop Motion Studio will help you make your own stop-motion Lego video.
Ages 8-12: Building a zebra with 30,000 Legos (2 min)
Speaking of white stripes... This zebra is built layer-by-layer by a group of people with a carefully made plan. What results is a life-size animal that looks like the statues you might see at Legoland or the Lego store. The tiny people in the White Stripes video would fit into just the very tip of the zebra’s nose.
Because there are thousands of bricks in the zebra, the overall shape and design can be a lot smoother, with curves and shapes that are much closer to what a zebra really looks like. Instead of a full-on cartoon depiction, this has much more detail. It looks like a video you accidentally set on low resolution.
You can also see how the zebra requires metal scaffolding and cross-hatched layers to stand up. It wouldn’t stay together if it was just solid Lego bricks!
Ages 12-15: Make a concrete mold out of Legos (8 min)
Content warning: Bleeped swearing
In this Buzzfeed video, the hosts try to recreate a popular DIY project where you make a table by creating a mold out of Lego bricks and then filling the inside of the empty structure with concrete. At the end, they remove the Lego frame and are left with two concrete tables that “nest” together. Individual Lego bricks are just plastic and mostly air, but the structure of them together is strong enough to hold up to poured concrete. (This project might ruin some bricks, however.)
You could use Lego bricks to make a mold of something of your own, whether that’s for modeling clay or classic papier mache using paste and newspaper. Or you could be like this talented mom who used papier mache to make a piñata shaped like a Lego brick using recycled tissue boxes.
(Last week’s most popular activity was: the Simon’s Cat animated YouTube series.)
If you make any cool Lego projects this week, please share! Tag us on Twitter @toolkitstem, share on our Facebook page, or tag @roboticsbeyond on Instagram with the results!
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Get in touch: Tell us what your family is looking for in STEM activities and we’ll curate a list just for you. Email toolkitnewsletter@gmail.com.
Wow that’s cool!
A scientist at IBM just published a paper about a microscope he made from Lego bricks and a computer camera. He put all the plans online, so if your family has a 3D printer...
The Toolkit is written by Caroline Delbert and produced by Robotics & Beyond
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