What did we do?

First, we brushed up on the Coral Castle's history. It was built by a Latvian immigrant named Ed Leedskalnin between 1918 and 1946, and consists of over 1,000 tons of coral. Somehow, he moved all that coral by himself! The castle has weird and fascinating features like a stone rocking chair, and cool statues of the moon and Saturn. We wanted to figure out how Ed moved all of these massive stones! From our investigating, we know he used simple tools. We built a similar set-up to Ed's, using a fulcrum and lever. Then we built a tripod with a block and tackle system, also based on Ed's original design, to see if we could lift huge limestone blocks of the ground. more...