I'm Nate from Design Squad.

And I'm here with: It is a treasure grabber.

SHANE: It's a piece of cardboard attached to straws.

NATE: Check that out.

We're going to take this and put a magnet on the bottom.

You pull the strings, and the treasure grab will go across the table... Aah!

We have stuff that's made of metal.

I see paper clips and I see keys and a screwdriver thingy.

SHANE: So we can move it along the table and pick up things.

Woo-hoo!

You got Shane's!

(laughing) The key part of it is that the two straws are arranged in a "V" kind of shape.

Now through the straws, we run a little string.

Strings that are attached and come up there.

I think it's working because of the friction on the string.

NATE: Friction is the force that resists the motion of the string in the straw.

The string can't move easily against the angled straw, thanks to friction.

One string is going up, while the other string is going down.

Now, the upward-going string locks on the treasure grab just by using friction, while the downward-going string can slide.

That means as you go back and forth with your hands, the treasure grab climbs.

I designed little cups with little loops on the end so we could scoop them up.

We took some bent paper clips to make hooks that we could add on to the treasure grabber.

Yeah, drag it along, drag it along.

(laughing) Uh-oh!

I got two of them!

Devices that travel along strings and ropes makes me think of something that I'm a little more familiar with too.

Nate invented the Atlas Ascender.

It allows you to repel up a building.

NATE: But instead of pulling on the rope itself, we used a motor to advance the friction drive so it can climb.

And it's kind of like this thing we're working with today.

Look at that thing go!

We made a super-sized version of the treasure grabber, and we attached a camera to it so we can view its flight up the tree.

We hooked the rope up over the tree limb.

First try!

It's working.

Yeah, look at that!

It's working!

It's going up!

Cool!

- It's awesome.

- Such a cool idea!

NATE: Instructions to make your own treasure grab are on the Design Squad website.

It's totally picking the camera up.

Whoa!

Oh!

(laughing) That was fast!