All of us have heard of or even owned a magic 8 ball once in our lives, just give it a shake and it will answer questions and make decisions for you, but could it be improved? I think that you can improve the magic 8 ball, and the first key step, is to use a potato.

Supplies

One Potato
Store bought pebbles (Any brand should do, as long as they are relatively small, i'm using small plastic ones)
One sheet of paper
Strong adhesive (Once again, many should do, super glue, gorilla glue, just not Elmers, Elmers glue doesn't work particularly well)
Sharpie marker (Or again, just any permanent marker)
A decently sharp knife and a spoon

Step 1: Selecting the Potato

This first step should be rather self explanatory, select a potato of medium/large size, it shouldn't be too hard to find one, ideally you want really large potatoes but as long as you aren't using mini potatoes that you can fit in your mouth whole, then it should still work (Keep in mind that every potato is special and unique in it's own way so it may not always work simply because of the shape the potato is, so pick a relatively round one with few dents in it)

Step 2: Hollowing Out the Potato

While this step also seems self explanatory, there are extra precautions to take so pay attention, first you want to take a knife and split to potato down the middle, Try to get it as close to 50/50 as possible, then try and find about the middle of each half and mark it with your sharpie, then draw a line from the center to the edge of the potato on each half Make sure the lines match up with each other, this is very important for later, then draw a circle perimeter about 0.5 inches from the edge of potato (or however much perimeter space you need, just keep the outer shell of the potato relatively sturdy), and the carve it out with a knife and or spoon, and repeat on the other half, if any part of this step has confused you, do not worry, the images attached to this step follows each sub-step, not just the result.

Step 3: Making the Potato Magic

Now that you have the carved halves of the potato, see how many of the pebbles it takes to fill just ONE of the halves, then set that many aside, we wont be using the rest of the pebbles, on pieces of paper small enough to fit on one face of the pebble, write down your Magic 8 ball styled answers in pen/pencil such as "Yes" "No" "Maybe" or "Ask me Again" and use you glue/adhesive to stick the pieces of paper onto the pebbles, then move on to the next step.

Step 4: Finalizing the Potato

First thing you want to do for this step is to place just one pebble into one of the halves and trace around it with your marker, then you want to take your knife and then cut out the traced hole, Your last step for this part is to glue to potato together again, this is where that line of sharpie we drew earlier comes in handy so that you can line them up for applying glue to the potato and sticking the halves back together.

Step 5: Troubleshooting

Place the labeled pebbles inside the potato, to see if it works, cover the hole with your finger/thumb, and shake the potato while asking it a question, then let a single pebble fall out, that will be the potato's answer, if the pebble does not fall out there are two likely problems, the hole of your potato could simply be to small for a pebble to fit, in which case it needs to be wider, or you put too many pebbles in the potato and there isn't enough room for it to move around, hence why we were only supposed to place in enough pebbles to fill half of the potato, you may need to cut it in half again to remove some of the pebbles.

Step 6: Congratulations

If you have made it to this step then congratulations, you have made your magic potato and you know it works! Now you'll never have to make a hard decision ever again! Just shake the potato, let a singular pebble fall out and the potato will answer your questions for you! As a bonus step, if you with to preserve your magic potato while not in use, just place it in a container with cold water (don't include the pebbles), seal, and refrigerate.

Introduction: Magic Potato