Blue Marble 2

Back in February, Kaplamino gave us a wonderful chain reaction called The Blue Marble. He's back with Blue Marble 2, in which physics and timing combine to make this chain reaction act like a pinball machine! What's really neat about this one is that Kaplamino gives us some insight on how the tricks are done. From the YouTube page:

The trick at 0:23 caused the majority of the fails. It had to be exactly in the right position and it was moving because of the vibrations of the trick above.

The air canon with the balloon was a big challenge to make. The rubber band squeezes the balloon around the straw to release the air in a specific direction. Then the hardest part was to find how to stop the air and deliver it when I want. It was too difficult to put something like tape at the end of the straw because it was either too clingy or not enough. The solution was to twist the balloon around the straw and block it in this position with a rope. In this position the air stays in the balloon until it untwists. I explain it because I think what exactly happened it's not easy to get when you see the video.

After this I built a timing catapult trick. I know I'm crazy because timing tricks are so unreliable, it was mostly based on luck but worked 80% of the time. It was so sensitive, just a little more dust or some hair on my table could make it fail so I had to clean it for almost every take.

Yep I used a fidget spinner again, I'm proud of this one, nice and almost never failed.

The big catapult was supposed to be a trick with fire (the plan was to build something with elements: fire, air and water). The marble was supposed to go up because of the explosion of a firecracker :p
But it was too risky, I know it can work (it worked 2 times) but with MASSIVE luck. It's impossible to predict how they'll explode. And it caused lots of others problems. The marble was burned and it wasn't rolling really well after that.
The shockwave can trigger other tricks and finally the debris from the explosions was falling all over the place and could block the marble at a later stage. It also burned the table and hurt my ears. So I gave up, but maybe you'll find this trick in a screenlink later ;)

About the water trick. Release the water was really easy, but it took me weeks to figure out what to do with it. You can't push something with it, not enough force ...
So I taped a folded paper and when the water touched it, it got wet and unfold because of the weight :D But the marble also touches the water and gets wet. After that you can see that it moves slowly.

Note that we get to see how slanted the table is when the camera pans near the window. There's not much slant at all... just enough. (via Laughing Squid)