Professor Fulcrum
Professor Fulcrum (left) with some example card sets (right)
· Professor Fulcrum is an educational toy that uses the lever simple machine to teach children between the ages of 4 and 14 math, geography, history, and many other subjects.
· The toy is a 2' tall, plastic-molded robot whose arms are formed by one long lever with pins at both ends of it. You put a weighted question card on his right had and a weighed answer card on his left hand.
· The principle behind the toy is that each question and its
corresponding answer have the same weight. When the correct pair is put on
the robot's arms, the lever will be perfectly balanced and a pointer that
is perpendicular to the lever will point straight up to the check sign. If
the answer is incorrect, it will tip the balance either left or right and
the pointer will point to the 'X'.
· In addition, separate card sets can be purchased. For example, the drawing above shows one possible kit: US States. Geography students can put the outline of a state on one side with the state name on the other.
· Construction cost is non-trivial for a purely mechanical
toy. First of all, the plastic molding must be done carefully to make the toy robot-like and fun. Also, there must be a great amount of effort put into the balance arm. It must be sturdy so that it maintains precision. It is possible that smaller children may hurt their eyes on the arm, so children under 4 should not play with Professor Fulcrum. Finally, the cards must be carefully calibrated so that you can have 50 cards in a set with 50 different pairs of weights. Estimated Retail Price: $30
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Send any feedback to Greg Nofi.