Building a mystery box

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Make: television host John Edgar Park made a "mystery box" for his friend. The inspiration for this object (which contains something of interest that the recipient is supposed to never see) came from J.J. Abram's TED Talk about the mystery magic trick box from Lou Tannen Magic Store that he's own since childhood but has never opened.

Here's what the fellow who received the box had to say about it:

On the top of the box is a question mark and the bottom is the Greek letter Phi. The box even had a theme: One of the faces carries a picture of 16th-Century German mathematician Michael Maestlin, who was the first scientist to write about the Golden Ratio. Another face sports a golden spiral, which is another way of expressing that constant, yet another shows an image from Leonardo DaVinci's Divine Proportion applying the Golden Ratio to the human form. The panels of the box even conform to the ratio, being 3 inches wide by 4.85 inches high. Crazy nerdy.

More esoterically, moving the box caused an intriguing rattle to sound from inside. Perfect.
So what's next? I'm just going leave the box on my desk and admire its mysteriousness.

I'm admiring the mysterious of it, too!

Building a mystery box