Have you ever watched videos on the Strandbeest – Dutch for “beach beasts” (what a tongue-twister!) – and wondered how they worked? Or have you ever sat in a car on a rainy day and pondered the very deep question of how windshield wipers operate? If your answer to any of the previous questions is yes, then this class is for you! In this class, we would be exploring what are known as linkages – a collection of bars and joints that can convert one type of motion to another. As mentioned, linkages and their applications are ubiquitous: from our limbs to bicycles to pliers, just to give some examples. What is unintuitive and interesting about linkages is that while most motors produce rotational motion, we can somehow cleverly use linkages to convert these rotations to up-and-down or side-to-side motion. We will be analyzing planar linkages such as the scissor lift linkage, Hoeken linkage, Chebyshev linkage, and Peaucellier–Lipkin linkage using vectors and projective geometry. Afterwards, we will look into Theo Jansen’s Strandbeests and the main mechanism behind each leg. We will end off with a hands-on activity: building our very own model of the Strandbeests' leg!