Do you already have an original idea for your surprise or are you unable to do any crafts at all? Haarlemmer Rolf Hut is the surprise specialist and explains how you can make a very nice and original surprise with a little technology.
Rolf works at TU Delft and a while ago wrote a book about making surprises. He explains how you can add a bit of technology to surprises. “So that you can not only be beautiful, but also work. This can be done with very simple, simple techniques,” says Rolf.
In the Hut house, Rolf’s 11-year-old son is also working hard on a surprise. “Of course I can’t reveal too much,” Rolf jokes. Of course, his son still has to surprise someone with it. “I can tell you, there is a construction ready here and we will soon have to start working on the programming language to get it working.” They will do that together. “It is important that it is his surprise.”
Music card
According to Rolf, it is very easy to add music to your surprise. “You know those singing cards?” he asks. NH radio reporter Sjoerd Hilarius has brought one that can record something himself, and Rolf immediately opens it. “So there is a speaker in it and a small piece of electronics. And there is a button, if you press it, it records for 20 seconds.”
When you open the card, the cardboard pulls on the electronics, causing the music to play. “You can do two things,” says Rolf. “You can keep the card intact and then hide it in your surprise. Then, for example, you ensure that it is a Harry Potter book that opens and then you can play Harry Potter tune.” You can also detach the technology from the card.
Rolf has another tip. “Very simple, two cotter pins and an elastic band around it, then you already have the basis of a catapult. With a paperclip you can shoot things. If you then make a disc on that paperclip and paint it like a football, then it can shoot penalties .If you paint it red, it’s a Frisbee.”
Rolf doesn’t think it all has to be complicated, not at all. “Stick to simple things that you understand.” He mentions magnets. “If you hang that on a fishing rod and you make a sea full of fish, where each fish has a paperclip in its nose, you can fish them out one by one.”
“If you put the same magnet behind a partition and at the front you have a figure with a magnet, you can move it,” says Rolf about the following example. “Then you can create a theater performance in which someone moves. With a technique you have all kinds of different applications.”
Rolf thinks that he didn’t even make such nice surprises as a child, as long as they did something. And with Rolf’s tips, this should certainly work.