For many of our readers, the “culture festivals” held at high schools and colleges will already be familiar thanks to their prevalence in anime and TV dramas produced in Japan. Even if you’ve never been to Japan yourself, you probably already know that the classes turn their rooms into fun little shops, offering food and entertainment for their families, friends, alumni fellow students and teachers.
While most of them aren’t particularly elaborate, every now and then, a class with will show up with a project that goes above and beyond. This year, one of those projects exploded online, capturing the attention of thousands of Twitter users. The idea? The students made their own “tea cup” ride! It’s just like what you’d see at Disneyland, but entirely mechanical and way, way more awesome!
A bit of ingenuity can go a long way, so we imagine whoever came up with this design is already on the path to fame and riches as an engineer. Or at least going to have no trouble getting into a decent university.
[tweet https://twitter.com/1230Seiya/status/649532795547598849 align=center]The tweet above showing off the “coffee cup” ride garnered almost 50,000 retweets and favorites combined—which is probably about 10,000 times what they expected! But it’s not difficult to see why the video is so popular, as you really have to respect the ingenuity and dedication to not only make this ride but to keep pushing it for customer after customer.
▼ But it was surely worth it for 29,000 retweets.
[tweet https://twitter.com/1230Seiya/status/650990904090607617 align=center]If you’re wondering how the ride was made to spin, you may be interested to know that no bearings were used. One Twitter user asked and was surprised to learn that the spinning was accomplished using only “casters,” as in the spinning wheels you find on the bottom of handcarts and the like.
[tweet https://twitter.com/Recon1023/status/649582872139960320 align=center hide_thread=’true’]“By ‘tires’, do you mean casters? So, you didn’t use any bearings? (´・ω・`) Thank you!”
We’re not sure how much more difficult that actually makes things, but we’re still impressed. And now that we’ve watched those kids pushing the wheel for nearly an eternity, we can’t help thinking of this. We might need to update it for the modern age though. Maybe something about getting lots of attention on Twitter and selfies?
Source/image: Twitter/@1230Seiya
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