Abacus

I built a functional abacus! The macaroni bricks around the cylinder represent the wooden beads of a classic abacus. 🧮

I’ll explain how it can be used to count for those not familiar. The abacus is at zero when all beads are slid down. You start in the right hand column sliding the beads upward to the “bar”. Each bead on the “lower deck” has a value of one. Each bead on the “upper deck” has a value of five. Once you slide all five beads up, you transfer that number to a bead on the upper deck then reset your beads on the lower deck and begin counting again. Once two beads on the upper deck are slid upward, that equals ten, which is then transferred to the next column to the left. Each column will represent a power of ten, which makes the furthest column to the left represent the number one million!

An abacus can be used to do more complex math functions like addition, subtraction, multiplication and division (even square root) however I am not skilled enough to explain that!