The Amazing Miniature Labyrinth - Math Topic

For the past couple of weeks, I have been designing and formatting a 3' X 3' maze for an event at the Exploratorium in San Francisco. It's a maze for two people standing on a platform supported by springs. Their task is to guide a golf ball through the maze to the exit by using their positioning and bodyweight. The final product turned out really well, even though a few of the measurements were off. As of right now, our class is planning to take the labyrinth to the Maker Faire, and others in the class are designing other mazes so that the difficulty can be changed.

The math concepts that I used while designing this maze were basic principals, such as adding and subatracting, but also had to use perimeter to make sure that no pieces were too short or long. By making a miniature version on graph paper, I was able to map out the wooden pieces and take account of their width. This helped make it easier when it finally came down to cutting out the blocks and gluing them down.

UPDATE: The labyrinth was not brought to the Maker Faire 2015, but, overall, the Maker Faire Bay Area was a huge success! Maybe next year!