PITTSBURGH (KDKA) – It all starts with a turn of the creaky old wheel – that triggers the giant catapult and the massive teeter totter that hurls bowling balls into the air.

“It’s a life-size Mouse Trap. It took me 13-years to build. It’s entirely hand-built,” said creator Mark Perez. “It weighs 50,000 pounds; it takes us five days to assemble.”

It’s taking shape at the Carnegie Science Center for a grand unveiling this weekend.

“The folks at the Toonseum, who are good friends of ours, first brought this to our attention and said ‘Why don’t we bring this to town?’” said Ann Metzger, the co-director of the Science Center.

But why would anyone build a life size mouse trap?

“As a kid, I played it all the time. I got more interested in the spectacle and I started making bigger and bigger things, and really wanted to go around and do it for the smiles,” said Perez. “The purpose of this crane is to lift a two ton safe and we like to crush trinkets of meaning underneath it.”

Expect to see effigies of Steelers rivals get crushed by the safe – maybe even Batman – but in the end, you might actually learn something.

“We call it Newtonian physics for us,” said Perez. “We have a lot of levers and gears and potential energy and we charge up springs.”

“If you can entertain, you can educate as we say here at the Science Center, and this is just a way to have fun as we always do over here,” added Metzger.”

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