I really enjoy building marble runs. I find it to be a great creative outlet. It is similar to programming in that you have to come up with an plan, build it, test it, debug it, and finally present it to your audience to receive feedback.
There are several variations in my marble run structures and how I display them. Sample marble, many marble, and marble race - my favorite. My primary tool for building marble runs is a brand called MarbleWorks by DiscoveryToys though I also build with Legos on occasion. Below are a few of my marble runs. If you like my marble runs you can subscribe to my channel on youtube to be motified when I post a new video.
Many Marbles
This is the oldest marble run I still have on youtube. Here I started experimenting with multiple exit points, drops, splits, and a style of showing the structure of the marble run before showing it in action.
Here I wanted to play more with diverging and converging routes. I actually wanted a single entry point and single exit point but didn't have enough splitters to make a single entry point so I ended up with three. The first run through shows all routes at once. After that I block off splits and show each route individually.
In my second Lego marble run I experimented with the flexibility of the plastic bricks. I was able to make hills and curves with the slight bend one can get from the joint between the bricks. See more details of this project on my MOCPages page.
Sample Marbles
This is my second oldest marble run video. I simply built the tallest structure I could with available parts and then ran a single marble through it.
This was my first marble run built with Lego. My design goal wasto build a railless marble run where the bridges were interchangeable. I ended up having bumpers at strategic points on the briges - determined by where previous marbles had fallen. My original video included a pan up the marble path and ended with out takes but youtube analytics showed that people were not interested in those segments so I edited them out. I also wanted to show that it wasn't a fluke that the marbles to make it to the end of a raillless marble run so I ran 3 marbles through it at the same time.