For more on K'Nex and K'Nex lamps visit our K'Nex web pages.

07/26/08 - Trampoline Tower

Here it is, the latest addition to our K'Nex menagerie. We've finally built the last of the great "big builds", the Trampoline Tower. The balls ride up the chain in the center and come down along the various pathways, including a few leaps into one of the two hoppers. The eponymous action involves the two symmetric trampolines above the middle hopper. The balls take a big bounce right in the middle of things. We've been busy, what with the Hawaiian Luau and all, but we should have video at some point.

Keywords: science, art, k'nex


08/21/07 - New K'Nex Lighting Option

Over the years, Kaleberg Symbionts has earned a reputation for producing the finest, most intelligently design K'Nex based light options. Our ground breaking Promenade lamp set the standard for fine K'Nex lighting design. Now, Kaleberg Symbionts is proud to announce a new lighting option, a new kinetic, dimmable, shelf mounted, small format lamp which we have named One Tree. It is a simpler design than Promenade, but the "L" shaped light filter works with the single rotating K'Nex tree to provide a new level of light, and a new level of symbiotic design.

Keywords: k'nex, art, kale


The Promenade for Julia lamp

11/26/06 - How to Build a K'Nex Promenade Lamp

One of our site visitors asked how to build one of these lamps, so we uploaded some photos and diagrams to help out. This is a really pretty lamp, and not that hard to make.

For the photographs and diagrams, click here.

More construction

Under construction

Inside the controller

Keywords: k'nex, science, lamps


The Cookie Tree

12/13/04 - This Year's Cookie Tree

The Christmas trees are up and our house is becoming one big grove. We held our cookie tree decorating party yesterday and now the air is full of pine scent and gingerbread.

We hold a cookie party primarily for children, but it is the adults who do most of the decorating. The children run around and play with our K'Nex. Some of them do decorate cookies, and this should cause great satisfaction to the grinders of extra fine confectioner's powdered sugar and the folks in the food dye plants.

Now, all we have to do is hang our stockings by the chimney with care and stuff all our presents under the tree.
 
Closeup Cookies Big Tree Closeup

Keywords: christmas, food, k'nex


10/03/04 - The K'Nex Promenade Lamp

There is a new K'Nex lamp to join the others. This one was built as a birthday present for Julia and it is named Promenade, because it has a promenade of crazy creatures under its whirling umbrellas.

Roll your mouse over the lamp to see how pretty it looks in the dark.

For more on this lamp, including a neat little movie, and others, check out our K'Nex lamp page.
Promenade for Julia Lamp - Light

Keywords: k'nex


05/02/04 - Kenner Girder and Panel Lamp

We've just introduced a new lighting option, The Kenner Girder and Panel Lamp. For those who don't remember, Kenner produced a building set starting back in the 1950s which let one build in the latest style. Gone were bricks and boards, or heaven forfend, logs. Modern buildings had steel frames and translucent panels. This building set, with its brilliant orange and blue panels captured this architectural style quite well, and the translucent panels in the set modulate the light to a pleasing glow.

Keywords: k'nex


04/30/04 - Our Remote Control K'Nex Lamp

Our Original K'Nex Lamp now has a friend. We've added a Remote Control K'Nex Lamp using the guts from one of K'Nex's remote control dragsters. It not only illuminates, it is interactive. K'Nex building sets are a lot like Tinkertoys in that they let you build spatially with rods and connectors. The rods are in lengths which are multiples of the powers of two; the connectors provide up to eight connections in an octagonal configuration.  It is probably a simple exercise in Galois Field Theory to determine whether any arbitrary form is K'Nex constructable. (If you haven't taken Modern Algebra, ignore that sentence).

Keywords: k'nex, science