K'NEX

K'NEX is a brand name of a toy construction system invented by Joel Glickman, designed and produced by K'NEX Industries, Inc. of Hatfield, PA. Currently Norman Walker is the president of the organization. The toy consists of interconnecting plastic rods and connectors. more...

It improved upon, and was inspired by, an earlier construction toy made of colored wooden dowels and connecting nodes called Tinkertoys. It is a construction toy in the same genre as LEGO and Meccano, although it uses rods, not bricks or metal strips. Until recently, K'NEX had not introduced sets containing brand constructions (as LEGO does with Harry Potter, Star Wars, etc.), but often based its sets around popular fads (such as mech warriors and RC cars). However, in 2001, K'NEX broke from this trend and introduced a line of toys using the BattleTech/MechWarrior label.

K'NEX connectors and rods are colour coded: K'NEX rods come in a range of lengths, each length being a distinct color. When the additional length of connections is taken into account, the ratio between successive lengths of rods is 1/√2. This makes the construction of right-angle isosceles triangles simple, and these triangles provide the structural strength in models. Most types of K'NEX rods are rigid, but there are flexible versions of some of the longer rods. K'NEX connectors connect rods at angles which are multiples of 45 degrees.

List of Rods

• The smallest Rods are dark green with a black metallic version and are so short that only 2 Connectors will fit on it, one on each end.

It is too small to form the hypotenuse of any right isosceles triangle, but forms the legs of a right isosceles triangle with a white hypotenuse.

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