Skwish

A few weeks ago I bought myself... Wait! Let me start over. A few weeks ago I bought my son an awesome toy: a Skwish. The Skwish is based on the principle of tensegrity - a term first coined by Buckminster Fuller - and was designed by Tom Flemons, founder of Intension Designs.

The term tensegrity is a contraction of "tensional integrity" and refers to structures that get their strength by a clever (and often elegant) combination of tension and compression elements. Man, I can't wait to explain this to my boy when he gets older! This is what I will tell him:

The toy is made from wood and elastic cord. There are six wooden rods grouped into three pairs. The rods in every pair are parallel to each other and every pair is positioned orthogonally to every other pair in 3D. Elastic cord keeps the rods in position (tension). The rods, in turn, keep the cord from collapsing into a shapeless heap (compresion). This results in a structure that is quite agile; you can pull and twist it, but it will always rebound to its original shape.

Every rod is capped on both ends by two ellipses and is threaded trough another that is free to move over its length. This makes a nice sound that my son likes. The colours used for the rods and beads are not incidental either. Quick analysis shows that the designer uses the three primary (red, yellow, blue) and three secondary colours (green, violet, orange). Every pair of parallel rods and their spheres are coated in complimentary colours (pairs of opposite colours on the color wheel; red:green, yellow:violet, blue:orange).

I hope my son has as much fun with his Skwish as I did. As long as he knows that when he grows tired of it (how could he?!) it goes back on my shelf.