Archive for: July 2009

If it weren’t for the aerodynamics, golf would hold little fascination for me.

As a golfball is struck by a driver, it compresses along the axis of impact and then elongates again as it leaves the club face.

Oscillatory motion (of a similar amplitude to the size of the surface dimples) persists for an appreciable part of anyone’s best shot.

This is a different flow regime from the textbook, steady-flow case in which a turbulent boundary layer is formed by the dimples which reduce drag.

The energy of the ball in practice is partly dissipated internally as heat and the turbulent boundary layer will repeatedly break off into extra vortices -which means that it must travel less far than a non-flexible ball.

Today’s invention is therefore a golfball with diametrically-opposed coloured dots. Between these, on the inside, is a very stiff reinforcement bar. When the ball is struck along the axis defined by the dots, it will be subject to less total frictional energy loss in flight and thus provide extra yardage.

Extra benefit would be provided by a clubhead which itself was dimpled.

Today’s invention is a new form of icecube, designed to float in one’s drink whilst containing a shot of some other drink (possibly based on alcohol and in a contrasting colour to that of the main drink).

The thickness of the ‘cube’ could be varied by making a small change to the geometry of the mould, providing some extra anticipation of the moment when the second liquid starts to mix with the first.

Urban dwellers are increasingly under pressure to live in smaller spaces. Beds take up a huge amount of room.

Today’s invention is a bed which consists of a team of robotic trolleys.

You position the padded bedbots under your body and they provide all the necessary comfort and support. When you roll over, or change position, these little devices know enough about the geometry and dynamics of such movements that they can anticipate exactly were to relocate in order to provide an effectively continuous sleeping surface.

When you get up, the machines automatically form a neat, space-saving stack in the corner.

When the groceries get delivered, there is always a temptation to just upend the bags or crates straight into the kitchen cupboards. I’m discouraged from doing this, however, by the fact that old products can thus be left unused for long periods.

Today’s invention is a simple shoebox-like insert for cupboards which has a U-shaped interior. This allows incoming stock to be pushed into the left hand side (grey items) and, because the floor of the box is polished, each items bears on its neighbour and easily drives an older item towards the front on the right hand side.

If you want a series of items from within a box, just push them around by hand.

New products might be inserted through a flap or brush-type door, in order to avoid confusion about which end was the entrance. It would also make sense to use one box for one type of good eg tinned tomatoes, although there is an interesting serendipity element to cooking with whatever emerges from a given box. If that item is presently unwanted, simply reinsert it in the left hand side.

The boxes could be folded together from eg a plastic sheet of parts which would allow them to fit anyone’s cupboards. A similar system might be used in shops (but with a one-way entrance to stop people grabbing fresher items from the left side).

Generally, I dislike soft-top cars compared to their robuster, roof-reinforced relatives. I was looking in disbelief at the complexity of a particular BMW convertible the other day…the folding mechanical lid seemed to work smoothly enough, but the resulting hard top was covered in seams and the otherwise smooth shape of the 3-series was lost completely in a patchwork quilt of panels.

Today’s invention is therefore a convertible roof consisting of two components, each an arc of a cylinder.

These would lock together along one pair of edges to allow open-topped motoring. They would then be rotated in opposite directions so as to join the other two edges overhead.

Each tube could have a reinforced window section, without greatly compromising strength and providing some of the drama of gull-wing doors. The drive would be via gears embedded in the circular end of each cylinder and be potentially fast enough to raise the roof in the event of a rollover.

For ease of access, I’d like to see the roof joint in the left hand image also act as a hinge and thus allow both sections to rotate upwards, like the wing casings of a scarab.

It won’t be long before printed newspapers cease to exist, at least as sources of paid-for news.

Until then, today’s invention is to leave a small semicircular section at the outer edge of each page unprinted, so that newspapers can be opened and closed whilst reading without getting one’s hands covered in newsprint.

This would represent a small loss of column inches but a major improvement in customer relations.

Still in a nostalgic frame of mind in connection with the moon landing anniversary, today’s invention is an upgraded space helmet.

Even today, astronauts wear a transparent plexiglass dome on their heads when exposed to the near-vacuum of space. This is in constant danger of being scratched, rendering the wearer effectively blind at some very inconvenient moments.

Today’s invention is therefore a transparent tubular shield which fits onto the neck seal of a future spacesuit and which can be rotated by a small motor about the vertical axis of the neck seal.

This would protect the inner dome from damage, act as an extra radiation shield and as a platform for various tools eg binoculars, visual displays or magnifying lenses.

In extremis, this could be grabbed and wrenched off the neck seal by the astronaut, if necessary.

Sometimes swimming against the tide can actually be a valuable metaphor to adopt.

Enormous resources have been expended on special surface coatings which are intended to discourage fouling of seagoing vessels by barnacles.

Today’s invention reverses this logic. For large bodies which are broadly circular in cross section, adding barnacles can have a drag reducing effect (just as with the dimples on a golf ball, barnacles can ‘trip’ the flow boundary layer into turbulence).

Such an approach can be applied to eg oil and gas risers, which are often damaged by tidal and wave forces. These could be significantly lessened if the circular pipes were each equipped with a smallbore tube delivering barnacle larval food material from an onboard tank.

This would allow a natural and automated form of drag reduction.

Given the enormous effort devoted to the hydrodynamic design of ships’ hulls, I find it weird that the drag on the above-surface hull and superstructure is usually neglected.

Surely there is no need to have a massive ‘tower block’ built on a ship’s deck? Today’s invention is modular crew accommodation consisting of a cluster of containers on deck, each of which is essentially a large lifeboat.

These would have options to include large, sealable hatchways in order to create reasonably comfortable shared messes (such variability might actually be valued in reducing the boredom of a long voyage). In the event of a potential sinking (or pirate attack), the modules could be sealed and launched into the sea.

The issue of observation would be dealt with by having a deck crane dedicated to lifting a bridge module high in the sky when necessary. There might be several such observation modules for added assurance and each could be made an inertial platform, so that the crane compensated for the motion of the ship in the water…just like a bird holding its head still, by stretching and compressing its neck, when perched on an oscillating tree branch.

In honour of Apollo 11, today’s invention is a way for spacewalking astronauts to manipulate sensitive components, without their gloves.

A box with a transparent window has an access port at the top, into which a component (grey) can be placed and the hatch sealed. The astronaut engages both glove cuffs with the box and pressurises it using an air supply line from their suit (black).

The Astronaut can now remove the gloves inside the box, perform whatever task is required using bare hands (viewing through the window) and then reverse the process.