
Turing Tumble – Build Marble-Powered Computers - jtokoph
https://www.turingtumble.com/
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rational_
Someone built a in-browser simulator of Turing Tumble, if you're curious.

[https://jessecrossen.github.io/ttsim](https://jessecrossen.github.io/ttsim)

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TeMPOraL
That's fun to play with, but it's missing start/pause/stop controls and
explanation how to perform such actions :(.

I managed to get it to run after dropping some balls randomly on the main
field; the simulator then continued to release one ball after the other.

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onion2k
If you click the 'hand' icon on the top left you can then click on the hoppers
to dispense balls.

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TeMPOraL
Thanks. Didn't notice that, because... you have to place your mouse exactly in
the right spot, and only then an arrow icon will pop up under it, and only
clicking in that small spot will make the hopper dispense a ball.

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sagebird
Ridiculous we are still waiting on a Turing Tumble llvm backend that will emit
decent marble netlistings. I swear if it doesn’t have proper tail recursion,
you will have an actual mess when the stack overflows near the mere thought of
fib(n=10)

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itgoon
This is a complete mis-match for my use case.

I have cats.

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myth_buster
Creator is on reddit answering questions...

[https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/9d8fck/as_a_kid_i_vis...](https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/9d8fck/as_a_kid_i_visited_this_store_every_chance_i_got/)

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yesenadam
The wikipedia page on Fredkin & Toffoli's billiard ball computer[0] mentions a
2011 paper _Robust Soldier Crab Ball Gate_ [1] co-authored by Andrew Adamatzky
of the Unconventional Computing Centre:

"Soldier crabs _Mictyris guinotae_ exhibit pronounced swarming behavior.
Swarms of the crabs are tolerant of perturbations. In computer models and
laboratory experiments we demonstrate that swarms of soldier crabs can
implement logical gates when placed in a geometrically constrained
environment."

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billiard-
ball_computer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billiard-ball_computer)
[1][http://wpmedia.wolfram.com/uploads/sites/13/2018/02/20-2-2.p...](http://wpmedia.wolfram.com/uploads/sites/13/2018/02/20-2-2.pdf)

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emersonrsantos
More refined version of the classic Digi-Comp II and actually turing-complete,
according to the creators.

With its 2 Hz speed per “instruction” (ramps, gears) it’s not super slow. I
would love to see a bigger version and a simulator without board limits.

Edit: no one yet proved that the toy is Turing complete, but the creators
believe it is because you can build NAND gates.

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emmelaich
It couldn't be with a limited set of marbles could it?

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baddox
I think it would be fair to call the system Turing complete if it is
theoretically capable of addressing an arbitrary amount of memory. Of course,
no physical computer or Turing machine actually has unbounded memory.

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travis_brooks
When I was a kid a teacher donated an old game to the class that was a
rudimentary version of this, Avalanche[1]. None of the kids had seen this game
before but the satisfying mechanical movement and thinking it took to get all
the marbles to fall all at once made it became very popular. I had these fond
memories of Avalanche, and did actually think of it as a visualization when
studying hardware in college, but over time my recall had made it more
elaborate. Surprising to see how simple the old game actually was. If me and
my classmates got so engaged with a primitive ancestor of Turing Tumble this
new game could really catch on with kids, as long as it isn't overly
complicated.

[1]
[https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/446/avalanche](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/446/avalanche)

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nod
Got one in the Kickstarter and my kids love it. Great for the 7-10 age range
with adult partnership. The comic story is even decent! I imagine 12+ could
get pretty far on their own.

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rlevy
Agreed. I was surprised by how much my 6 year old became engaged in the story.
He frequently asks to play/solve more so he can find out what happens next in
the story.

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sohkamyung
Check out the Turing Tumble Education site [1] for PDFs of the teaching
resources (which includes the puzzles included in the actual set) and links to
the in-browser simulations of the Turing Tumble, including one in VR.

[1] [https://edu.turingtumble.com/](https://edu.turingtumble.com/)

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chaoticmass
When I was a kid I made contraptions similar to this using hotwheels tracks
with differently sized holes cut into them and slips of paper. Wasn't turing
complete, but could do some things. I would have had a blast with this thing.
I might buy one now so I can gift it to my nephew when he's a little older.

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mattkevan
When it said marble-powered computers I was imagining something like the
Marble Machine

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IvUU8joBb1Q](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IvUU8joBb1Q)

Looks like a cool educational project though.

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nvusuvu
Looks cool, but a bit pricey.

