There is something about him and his videos ( I have watched very few) that they seem they were recorded 20 or 25 years ago! But there is that beautiful serenity to them... love them!
I would die Happy If we could some how get him Knighted by the King for his ability to be bring Joy the world. If Sean Connery can be Knighted why not Tim. Hes done far more for the children and adults than Sean nothing against Sean though
Me: "Take the clear part off and show us the pattern the rolling pin makes!" I totally didn't get the title/pun until I saw everything on the table. >_>
I had one of those mercury mazes as a kid. I don't think I ever solved it properly, I liked to shake it really hard so the mercury broke into a bunch of tiny droplets, then manipulate it to rebuild them into one large one.
Thank you, both Tim and your team. This video holds a bit of a special place in my heart, as it was made after my request. I happen to have a mercury maze of my own, a bit different than the one here though as it's completely circular and the mercury bead was measured out in such a way to be able to solve it without ever breaking the mercury bead. Unfortunately mine is extremely weathered since it sat lost in our yard for about 7 years after Hurricane Katrina, but it's still in one piece essentially and still works fine. I had contacted them hoping to donate my toy to their collection, which was briefly discussed, but I gather that the shipping charges overseas wouldn't necessarily be worth it given the collection he already has seen here today. No worries by me, I just figured perhaps my toy should go to some sort of museum somewhere, not like you run across a mercury maze that survived Katrina plus spent 7 years lost in the weather ya know. Anyways, on a side note, I had another miniature maze similar to the ones presented around 9:20, which I picked up at an antique car festival, Cruisin' The Coast, but it was more or less a flat pocket style of 3D maze, with only like 3 'layers' to the sides. Most of the maze action was on the top and bottom ya know, but still the side edge maze portions made it that much more tricky. But the irony of the thing was that it was sponsored by our local mental hospital, with their BIG black logo printed right over the maze on one side. So the mental ward that sponsored it didn't stop for even a second to think that blocking vision of large parts of the maze wouldn't itself drive people crazy huh? 😂 Regardless, thanks again for everything you do, and have a wonderful holiday season and new year!
I had the mercury one when I was a kid. If you shake it real hard the mercury ball will bust into hundreds of small pieces that you can entertain yourself forming them into one piece again. Of course I eventually broke it open to play with the mercury.
His name is Tim Rowett, and he's been on TV before, apparently a long time ago though. From his Wikipedia article: "Grand Illusions was started as an online community for science and games in 1996. It was developed by Hendrik Ball and George Auckland (then BBC producers) who were exploring the role of the media and the World Wide Web during the late 90s." "Rowett appeared on the television science programme Take Nobody’s Word For It in 1989 alongside Carol Vorderman, demonstrating optical illusions." But back to my own thoughts, yes I totally agree, Tim should be on TV today!
I had a maze toy that i adored as a child. I got it sometime in the 90's. It was a clear acrylic rectangle filled with water and little maze square sections. You know those sliding tile number puzzles where you have to shift the tiles around till you get everything in numerical order? It was a bit like that. You had to tilt and wiggle the toy while these tiles slid around in the container of water and i remember being mesmerized at clearing a section and watching a tile slowly fall into place. Anyway i forget if you had a ball bearing to move through the maze or if you were just supposed to move the little air bubble through the maze but i played with that thing constantly. Shifting the tiles around to make a new maze, moving the bubble around the maze and watching it split apart and come back together. I wish I had it still.
I used to own that exact same round mercury maze. Shame you can't get them anymore. You can fix the scuffed/scratched plastic with some watch crystal polisher like "Polywatch"
With complicated toys like these I kinda wish they would get a second camera to show Tim's various facial expression. Though, an upgrade like that would make the older videos way more dated
Man I feel dumb. I'm confused as to how that puzzle has almost seven hundred thousand combinations. I get the 4 to the power of 6 but what am I missing after that? 6 pieces, 4 orientations (or states) so 4096 possibilities for that part. But after that I'm not sure. 6 sides to a cube with 6 pieces, so you would think 6 to the power of 6, 46656 combinations on that part.
Grab one piece... you have 6 potential faces of the cube to put that face in, and for each one of those, you have 4 orientations, so for the first piece you have 6*4 possibilities. For the next piece, you will have 5 faces of the cube left, and again 4 orientations, so 5*4 possibilities. You can follow the same pattern to come up to the following formula: (6*4) * (5*4) * (4*4) * (3*4) * (2*4) * (1*4) = 6! * 4^6 = 2949120 combinations! Now, many of these combinations are going to end up representing the same puzzle. At the very least, each combination appears six times, since we do not want to consider rotations of the same cube as different puzzles. This brings us down to 491520 combinations, which is somehow lower than the advertised number.
@@Insipidont Wow man I appreciate it. I took a class in statistics once but I forgot how to do all that stuff. I'm going to go back look over that stuff comeback here and check it out again. But I can't thank you enough for this.
you might like to check out Doug Factory puzzles, they have both a blind cube, where the maze is not only on the cube's surface, but inside the cube and a series of adventure themed mazes where part of the maze is underneath where you can't see it really cool stuff from France
As much as Tim was struggling with the mazes (they're clearly not his specialty!) He was charming and entertaining throughout! Tim is such a charming gentleman, and I've never heard a posher accent in my life. I would have adored having Tim as an Uncle or Grandfather in youth! Sadly I live in the states so he wouldn't have been able to come by very often but that would have made his visits extra special!
Metallic mercury, especially in that amount, isn't "deadly" at all. At most, it could let off some vapours that could in theory slightly harm the development of small babies' brains. The highly toxic one is "organic" mercury (a family of carbon compounds containing mercury).
@@RFC-3514 It's not deadly, but it is toxic. Elemental mercury used to be used in felting hats and the 'Mad Hatter's would have been quite a common malady.
@@cheyannei5983 - Literally _everything_ is toxic, even water. It's just a matter of dosage. You can handle metallic mercury just fine; absorption through the skin is almost non-existent. You can even eat it; absorption through the digestive tract is also minimal. It's not even significantly toxic if you inject it directly into your bloodstream (although it will block blood flow, so don't do that). The only relevant source of toxicity would be vapours, but at ambient temperature and for short periods, those would be irrelevant for an adult. Hatters worked with heated mercuric nitrate (not metallic mercury), every day, for several hours a day, over decades. It added up. But quite slowly.
@@RFC-3514 No, it's not a matter of dosage, there's no lower limit of mercury vapor exposure that does not cause harm, just low enough that the body can fix it.
I'd watch a video of just Tim trying to put that yellow maze lid on, good asmr material lol Also I have a coin bank that's shaped like a cube that also happens to be a ball bearing maze. You have to go through all 6 faces of the cube before arriving at the end, which is a switch which forces the ball bearing through to the start again, pressing a button in the process that pops the coin bank open.
Hallo Tim. Can you please help me with a question? There is a hidden message trick called "Red-Reveal". To see a secret message in a picture, you look through some red gel. I am going mad trying to find the inventor. Or even some early description of tge phenomenon. It must date from the 19th Century as coloured lights and photography used these tinted films. You must have old examples. What can you tell us about Red Secret Messages?
It's so nice that DC's Toyman decided to do a series of videos reviewing toys in his later years...... That ball maze with the blinking light would give me a headache to do.....
I had a toy called "Miller's Maze" when I was a kid. It was a completely clear acrylic cube divided up into 125 chambers (5×5×5). You put in a ball-bearing through a hole on top, then had to navigate the ball through the chambers to find the correct path to an exit hole. Wish I still had it, I had many hours of fun with it and solved it several times.
i don't know what it is about your intro, but i find that jingle in the beginning to be very loud and annoying, i always have to skip over it, and i think subconsciously might be why i opt not to click on many of the videos knowing it is coming
