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Hello! We’re going to take a look at some marvellous mechanisms.

A mechanism is a series of moving parts that work together to do a specific job.

You may have seen a lock like this on a gate or a door.

This lock works by using a slider mechanism. The bolt slides across and stops the door, or gate, from opening. A slider mechanism like this one is a mechanism that allows something to move in two directions.

Here, the snake can slide left to right. Let’s take a look at how this slider is made.

If I turn the snake around, you can see that it’s stuck onto a piece of card that I can use as a handle to slide it.

The larger piece of card has two slots cut into it, that work as a guide for our sliding snake. When we insert our snake into the guide, we can then slide it back and forth. The guide makes sure the motion is smooth and it keeps the part that slides, the snake, in position.

But a slider mechanism doesn’t just have to move left and right. You can make one that moves up and down as well.

When I turn this slider mechanism around, you can see the whale has a card handle here and the guide allows it to move up and down as it appears out of the sea.

Sliders appear in different things we use every day, like the lock. They are also sometimes used on music players to control the volume, drawers, curtains and windows that slide up and down.

So, keep an eye out for slider mechanisms around your home. Have a think about the direction they move in, and why they are used.