Place a metal ball on the white circular track and watch it go around and around with no visible means of force. How does it work? Inventor Greg Zumwalt reveals the secret at Instructables, where he also shows you how to build one of your own:
To overcome gravity and those thermodynamic law things, I've hidden an infrared transceiver, an electromagnetic coil and some electronic circuitry in the base to accelerate the ball bearing up the hill. As the ball bearing reaches the low point of the track, the infrared transceiver senses the ball bearing and generates a pulse into the electromagnetic coil which accelerates the ball bearing fast enough to overcome the uphill climb. Once over the uphill climb, the ball bearing rolls down the track, crosses over the infrared transceiver again, and the process repeats.
