Hi, I'm Nate Ball, host of Design Squad, and I accept PBS's ice bucket challenge to help strike out ALS.

Now, because I'm an engineer, I thought it would be fun to do it a little more interestingly than just dumping a simple bucket of ice on my head.

So to do it, I built this chain reaction machine.

Yeah!

Here's how it works.

First, I'm going to launch a rocket using the very same rocket launcher that I built in fourth grade.

Now remember, like always, before you do anything like this with heavy balls or ice buckets or power tools, make sure you have your parents' permission.

Come on, here's how it works.

The rocket launcher's pretty simple.

The bike pump pressurizes air into the rocket here.

These bolts keep it sealed on and held in place until you launch.

And when you yank this release mechanism, it launches up to here.

It's going to crash into that board, which disturbs the carefully balanced heavy ball so it starts rolling down the slope.

And the ball rolls into bucket number one, which is now suddenly heavier than the ice bucket.

The rope goes up over the pulleys so when bucket one goes down, the ice bucket goes up.

(loud thud) (laughing) Oh my gosh.

Now, the last part is dumping the bucket of ice.

That happens with this sensitive little catch that I made.

There's a small hook that's holding up the bucket.

That hook is attached to this lever.

It's quite sensitive, so when you hit that lever, it dumps the bucket... ...on my head.

Let's do this.

Three, two, one.

Whoo!

Oh, man.

That is really cold.

(laughing) All right, now it's time for me to challenge you guys out there to do your own awesome ice bucket challenge design and share it with us.

Take a picture, make a drawing of it, put it up on the Design Squad website, and let's help strike out ALS.