Join Playful Engineers teaching artist Jay Mankita for this hands-on event in which kids and families design, build, test, and play with Rube Goldberg “Machines” – complicated chain reactions accomplishing simple tasks. Participants learn through demonstration, and then through self-directed play, to make kinetic ‘machine’ parts, exploring force and motion, scale, and cause and effect, including catapults, zip-lines, domino towers, and gravity-powered carousels. Jay brings his chain reactions kit from his Traveling Makerspace, packed full with tracks, balls, blocks, cars, action figures, gears, pulleys, tinkertoys, k’nex, and literally thousands of dominoes. Come experiment. We’ll hear groans and cheers, as the machines run their course!

This program is part of “Level Up at your Library”, the 2025 iRead Summer Reading Program, and is made possible by the Friends of the Pelham Library, the Pelham Cultural Council, the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners, the Massachusetts Library System and the Boston Bruins.