When you don’t have anything to do and want to kill time, you probably just search for random videos on Reels or YouTube that caters to your interest and curiosity. Lego build videos are some of the most popular ones out there. If you’re like me who’s more interested in watching people create Lego structures than actually building one myself, then these videos are catnip for you. It’s pretty interesting to see how they are able to create these masterpieces and also film them for the enjoyment of other people.
Designer: Brick Experiment Channel
The Brick Experiment Channel is a YouTube channel that is more on the experimental side (well, it’s in their name after all) and their latest video proves that. They wanted to try for the longest chain of LEGO technic gears but the catch is they have to retain the same gear ratio of 1:1 from the first gear to the last one. This means that from beginning to end, the gears have to rotate at the same speed. Spoiler alert: They were able to add up to reach a gear count of 111. Seeing them reach that number is pretty impressive especially if you watch from beginning to end.
The video is able to show the entire process from when they started with just a few gears until they reached their limit. The gears are in gray while “platform” is red so you get a very minimalist feel unlike with most lego builds where you get a cacophony of colors and shapes most of the time. Towards the end when they completed the 111 gears, they were even able to change direction and do 3 full rotations of backlash. If you have the same tools as they do then you can probably do some experimenting on your own.
There’s something infinitely satisfying about seeing all the gears going around as they keep adding to the build, similar to what we feel when watching those Rube Goldberg machine chain-reaction type of videos. This is actually an older video so you can explore some more of their newer experiments involving gears and LEGOs on their YouTube channel.
