You don’t have to be a tween to be able to assemble one of these, but it might help. Sponsored in part by Google, the BigShot project was put together by Columbia University grad students as a method of teaching science and engineering concepts to children. It’s just like academia to try and teach someone something. Assembly takes less than an hour when following the tutorial and over four hours if you’re like us and think you can do it yourself. When the AA battery dies, there’s a wind-up generator. Makes you wonder why bother with the battery at all…