iBall Toy from Winning Moves Games

This is a fun, affordable little physics toy. While theoretically usable at pretty any age, for young children it would be little more than a glorified rattle. But for the appropriate ages, it becomes a pleasant distraction as you try to bend the laws of motion to your will and cause the small ball bearings inside to orbit in the right patterns. This is a toy which requires patience, as it's very easy to become frustrated with your inability to get it to work the first several times you play with it.

The iBall is sheer simplicity in design: A hollow plastic sphere containing 7 metal ball bearings. It also contains a small plastic circular stand upon which the ball can rest when not being used.

You play with the toy by taking the sphere in your hand and moving it so that the ball bearings move along the interior of the sphere in a specific pattern, controlled only by subtle hand movements. Some of the different options presented on the box are:

• "Launching" one ball bearing at a time into orbit at a time.
• Having the balls come to rest at the bottom of the sphere one at a time, while the others continue whirling.
• Getting multiple balls to orbit in three different directions at the same time.
• Time how long you can keep at least one ball in orbit.

The principles upon which the iBall is based may be simple, but actually performing these functions can prove quite challenging. While getting all 7 whirling is simplicity itself, getting just one of the balls into orbit while the other 6 remain stationary is quite a trick. Making them come to rest individually seems even harder, at least to me.

Overall, the purpose of the iBall is to utilize Newton's laws of motion and Kepler's laws of planetary motion to coordinate the motion of the balls within the sphere. Actually doing this, of course, is where the challenge comes in, and it's a challenge that can either cause the player to throw their arms up in frustration or spend hours upon hours enjoyably tackling the problem.