Defying gravity and common sense with the lowest-rated tensegrity table on Amazon Japan

This table defies a lot of things, but gravity isn’t one of them.

If you’ve been scrolling through social media in the past several months, you probably would have come across a picture of a tensegrity table. These are the types of tables whose weight pulls down on a central chain while simultaneously pulling upward on the chains on the edges. The two forces balance each other out but since the chains are all oriented in the same direction, it gives the illusion that the table is floating.

If you haven’t seen one of these things we’ll give you a look shortly… we hope. The fact is, we entrusted this job to Masanuki Sunakoma and as he always does, he decided to purchase the tensegrity table with the lowest rating on Amazon Japan, so the chances of it working properly are not good.

This product is called the Tensegrity Anti-Gravity Device Balance Physics Toy Ornament. Only some of these words accurately describe what it is, but we can’t blame them for putting a little razzle-dazzle to back up the 2,980 yen (US$20) price tag. However, it has received an average rating of only 1.3 stars with comments such as “defective,” “faulty,” and “the worst product ever.”

That seems a little harsh for what’s ostensibly just a table with a rather gimmicky support system. Could they really have screwed something so simple up that bad?

Well, for starters, what you see above is everything that was included in Masanuki’s delivery. Notice that there are no instructions which means he would have to refer to the picture on the Amazon page to put it together.

Among the parts, a mini screwdriver and Allen key were included. The screwdriver was handy and the Allen key was certainly thoughtful since it wasn’t compatible with any of the table’s parts. It seems that it was just a freebie.

As he started attaching the parts to each plate, he noticed that there was some more randomness to what was included. He was short one eye bolt.

And it seems that to make up for the missing eye bolt, he was given nine extra rubber bands for the central support. Extras are nice, but nine was kind of overkill. If only there were instructions to explain what was going on.

Because of the missing eye bolt, Masanuki could only attach three of the four outer chain supports. It seemed like this would throw off the balance but he had no choice.

He attached the rubber band to the central support…

Then lifted the top plate directly above the bottom…

▼ Masanuki: “Ooooh…”

It was a success! Despite the missing part, our writer’s tensegrity table stood upright and appeared to magically float in the air.

You could even say the one loose chain only added to the illusion.

Masanuki began to wonder if the lack of instructions and seemingly random assortment of parts and tools was all by design. Because of it he couldn’t help but feel an extra sense of pride in what he built and marveled at how it appeared to defy the odds in more ways than one.

Of course, a tensegrity table isn’t a table if you can’t put stuff on it. Luckily, this was indeed capable of holding small items.

The one small catch is that they have to be very carefully placed to one side or the whole thing will violently collapse into itself.

Despite the fun and satisfaction Masanuki got out of this product, he can’t recommend it in good conscience. People tend to want reliability in their tables and the lack of structural integrity in this one merely makes it tense.

Related: Amazon Japan
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