Opening Gears
Gears: spin a train of gears on a pegboard
A pegboard with a few gears already in mesh. Flick one and every gear it touches turns with it, small ones fast and big ones slow, each the opposite way to its neighbour, with a soft clockwork tick. Build your own train from the parts tray.
How to play
- Flick or drag a gear to spin it. The whole train turns and slowly coasts to a stop.
- Press and hold a gear to keep everything turning slowly.
- Drag a gear from the tray onto the board. It snaps onto a peg and joins any gear its teeth touch.
- Drag a gear by its middle to move it, or off the board to put it away.
- Belt: tap it, then two gears that do not touch, and they turn together the same way. To take a belt off, tap Belt, then the belt.
- Swing arm and slider: put one near a gear and it rocks or slides back and forth as the gear turns.
- Pick a look: brass on walnut, steel on slate, wooden clockwork or plastic.
Questions
- Why do some gears refuse to turn?
- Three gears that all touch each other, or any loop with an odd number of meshes, can never turn: each gear would have to go both ways at once. Real gears jam like that, so these shudder and stay put. Take one gear out of the loop and the train runs again.
- Why does the small gear spin faster?
- Meshed teeth go by at the same rate, so a gear with a third as many teeth has to turn three times as fast. Belts work the same way by the size of their pulleys.
- Is Gears free?
- Yes. Gears is free to play in your browser, with no ads, no sign-up and nothing to buy.
- Does Gears work on a phone?
- Yes. It works with touch on phones and tablets and with a mouse or trackpad on a computer, in any recent browser with WebGL 2.