Scene
Ball race
Four balls, red, blue, green and yellow, bounce around a ring with one small spinning exit. The first ball out wins.
Make this videoWhat happens
The balls start near the top with random speeds and fall under gravity. The exit is a short opening in the ring that rotates at 0.55 radians per second, so it keeps moving away from wherever the balls are. The balls also knock into each other. The race ends the moment one ball is through.
No colour has an edge: over variations 1 to 40, red won 11 times, blue 10, green 9 and yellow 10. Races can be over in a second or last more than half a minute, with a median of about 4.9 seconds, so Shuffle only picks races that last at least 8 seconds.
What you hear
Every hit on the ring plays the next note of the melody. Collisions between balls play a sharp clack, and a ball that only just misses the exit gets a swoosh and a high bell, so the near misses are easy to hear. Longer races build up as they go: a bass line joins after 5 seconds and bells double the melody after 12.
Songs that fit
Symphony No. 40 is the default. Races are short, so pick a melody that is recognisable from its first ten notes.
Make your own
Open Ball race in the maker, pick a song or upload a MIDI file, and download the MP4. Variation 12 is the one in the preview above. The same variation number always gives the same video, so you can share a link and get identical results.
Other scenes
- Spinning hexagon: The spinning hexagon test with a gap in one wall. The spin speeds up with every bounce.
- Escape the rings: A ball bounces inside 22 spinning rings. Each ring has a gap, and the ring breaks once the ball gets through it.
- Galton board: 300 balls fall through 12 rows of pegs. Each bin has its own note, so you hear the bell curve fill in.
- Growing ball: The ball gets a little bigger on every bounce until it fills the circle.
- Every bounce adds a ball: Every bounce can add another ball, up to 200 of them, while a slowly widening gap lets them out.
- Shrinking ring: The ring gets 1.5% smaller every time it is hit, until the ball no longer fits.
- 100 strings: Each hit ties a string to the ring and speeds the ball up. The ring has to hold 100 of them.
- Color war: Two balls paint the ring in their own colour. Whoever owns more of it after 30 seconds wins.