LEGO? You've got to be kidding.
Prior to this, I hadn't paid any attention to LEGO toys since my childhood. For those keeping track, that was back in the Johnson Administration. So I had no idea how those little bricks could be even slightly forbidding.

Well, apparently, LEGO's come a long way, baby!

Actually, it really has. As you can see in Figure A, LEGO parts are no longer just the little bricks we all remember. Among the seven thousand or so parts LEGO offers are beams, gears, sprockets, connectors, axles, and more.

FIGURE A


This is the set of parts I used in the ping-pong shooter. Way more than just bricks. Roll over picture for a larger image.

LEGO has also spawned a kit for building robotics that's really quite darned impressive. In fact, LEGO's been in the robot business for more than ten years and the Mindstorms NXT robot is a Bluetooth-equipped robotics system that's the rival of any kit robot I've seen to date. We've got some books in on Mindstorms NXT as well as the robotics system itself, and we'll be reviewing them all soon.

I didn't pay much attention to LEGO until now because I always thought LEGOs are for little kids. I was wrong. There's a huge interest in LEGO building among adults. By exploring Forbidden LEGO, I was about to find out the appeal of the modern LEGO system. As an engineer, what I found was almost irresistable.

Forbidden LEGO
The book Forbidden LEGO comes with five projects:

• A paper plane launcher
• A candy-coated catapult
• A ping-ping cannon
• An all-terrain LEGO, and a
• A high-velocity automatic LEGO plate dispenser

The book is called Forbidden LEGO because the LEGO design standards are such that the LEGO company is not real keen on their products launching objects and otherwise potentially causing harm. That, of course, was the real appeal to me.

Building a project
The ping-pong cannon caught my eye. I decided to build it.

This is where I ran into my first problem: parts. Fortunately eBay was there to help. Figuring that there couldn't be too much variety in LEGO parts (I was to be proven quite wrong), I bought a 50-pound lot from eBay. Explaining to my wife why there was a 50-pound box of LEGO parts arriving at the house made for an interesting conversation. Fortunately, Denise is very tolerant.