I was given a design challenge on Friday in my Physical Computing and Alternative Interfaces class. I needed to design a game which uses one or more of the following as the primary materials: spandex, dried beans, plush bats, yarn, cabbages, lab chairs, padlocks, magnifying glass, or paper clips. Also fairly recently was the advent of gravitational waves! And finally, my game which uses Spandex and Yarn:

In a world where humans and aliens have both harnessed the power of gravity, we must clash in the most epic of wars! With the firm and ignorant belief that the universe is not big enough for the two species, we terrible humans are trying to hurl the aliens world into the black hole at the center of our galexy! And of course, they are trying to stop that from happening.

The game is played with a large stretched square of spandex suspended ~4 feet off of the ground. The spandex has strings of yarn connected to it from both the top and bottom in a total of 16 places (8 unique connection points from both the top and the bottom), a ball, and eight 3 way switches on opposite sides.

When the switch is pulled either up or down, a motor will pull one of the pieces of yarn which is connected to the top or bottom of the spandex respectively. If your opponents corresponding switch is in the direction opposite yours, the spandex will return to equilibrium at that point.

At the start of the game, the alien’s planet is dropped into the middle of the spandex, representing the fabric of spacetime. The two players then flip switches trying to get the planet to roll off of the opposite side of the spandex!