Archive for: April 2011

We hear a lot these days about e-learning and gamification.

Today’s invention incorporates both these elements into a system to help students.

A laptop DVD drive would be fitted with a shallow cylindrical box, full of flat circular sweets (these sweets would be arranged in a spiral and pressed towards a small aperture in the box using a spring, in a similar way to rounds in a drum magazine).

On completion of some on-screen task, the drive would rotate the box so that the aperture in its base arrived at a specified location and then the drive would be opened.

Having arranged for the aperture to be unobstructed by the drive base, this would allow a student working on the machine to catch a sweet as it falls out of the box’s underside.

The drive would be closed and a new task begun.

Particulate stuff that separates into layers in transit is a nuisance. In particular, we buy dog pellets which come in a tub and which are almost completely stratified by size when the food is delivered.

This is a problem because the pellets contain different nutrients and a dog on a protein-only diet seems very much harder to control.

Today’s invention is therefore a plastic spiral which is screwed into a (well mixed) tub of pellets in the factory.

This limits any stratification to the wavelength of the spiral, so that on withdrawal from the tub, much more uniform scoopfuls can be extracted.

Today’s invention is an electric toothbrush which detects each of the different heads used by members of a family.

Equipped with a pressure sensor and a memory chip, it is able to record the duration and pressure history for each user.

The brush would be taken on each visit to the dentist, enabling brushing advice to be given to each individual.

I talked to a woman without pierced ears who said that she couldn’t wear diamond earrings -because clip-ons could never be trusted.

Today’s invention is therefore earrings which emit a sound when they are detached from one’s ear.

The two metal sides of the clip could be made to act as switch contacts in a circuit with a watch battery and a beeper. This would ensure that the wearer became instantly aware of losing one of her earrings.

These devices might even incorporate a sound chip so that earring-tones could be individualised.

I’m astonished that sometimes airliners dump fuel into the air without being involved in an emergency landing.

Even if it can be justified by virtue of the reduction in undercarriage damage, just spraying kerosene, especially over populated areas, can’t be acceptable in terms of human health or cost.

Today’s invention is a reusable auxiliary fuel tank for airliners in the form of a long flexible tube. This would have a valve at one end and a tough, wire-reinforced outer coating (like an offshore hose).

In flight, fuel could be drawn through the valve for use by the engines. If a landing was in prospect with too much fuel in board, several of these hoses would have surplus liquid from the main tanks pumped into them, be sealed and then extruded from the belly of the aircraft during the final approach to the runway.

The hoses, would impact the ground and flex, as in a parachute landing fall, spreading the shock as more of their length came into contact with the earth.

The hoses could be coloured for easy retrieval from the designated drop zone at an airport and multiply reused.

I was thinking today about why tanks aren’t fitted with ejector seats. Aside from all the practicalities of physical shock, space limitations and cost, the obvious problem is that gravity would cause crew members of a stricken vehicle to end up scattered and vulnerable on the battlefield.

Today’s invention is distantly-related to this question.

It’s an armoured personnel carrier with a manhole-size drill fitted to the underside (and driven by the main engine, as required).

To deploy troops, this vehicle drives across the battlefield and drills holes wherever required (even creating joined up trenches, if necessary).

Soldiers can then jump through a hatch in the hull of the vehicle into a properly formed foxhole -without being exposed to enemy fire.

Today’s invention is an attempt to overcome one of the bugbears of parenthood -getting a toddler to don a coat.

Youngsters have trouble getting their arms down the sleeves of a winter coat. Their limbs simply aren’t rigid enough, they can’t follow instructions and it takes maybe five minutes to squirm each arm down a sleeve. This process can even hurt a child’s hand if a parent is impatient.

Instead, I propose coats with sleeves which each have a zip running from armpit to cuff. To help a child get dressed, unzip the arm sleeve and pass their hand through the shoulder hole, grabbing it with your other hand through the unzipped arm.

Once the body of the coat is on, each sleeve can be zipped downwards around their arm with minimal distress and wasted time.

Today’s invention is a domestic storage/display case for anything which one thinks of as valuable. This would be in the form of a wall safe with the ability to display the contents behind an armoured glass window -when the safe door is opened.

In the event of a fire alarm, or some other reason for a fast evacuation, this unit would seal its door and be expelled, by eg a strong spring, out of the house and through the wall -guided by a rail to which it is secured by a strong cable lock.

Activated by the fire alarm, this allows precious items to be rapidly moved to a place of safety, removing the temptation to save material things instead of getting the hell out.

It seems that I have been following the wrong advice about laptop (or cellphone) battery preservation.

It’s better for them to be repeatedly slightly discharged and then recharged.

I tend to a) drain the battery completely before doing a recharge and b) run my laptop plugged in, whenever a power socket is available.

Today’s invention is therefore a timer which can be attached to a laptop (or phone) power cord which can be plugged into a machine all the time it’s available but which only passes current after a 10% discharge has occurred.

Today’s invention is more of a straightforward design. Since I couldn’t find any examples of this online, I thought it would be worth including.

It consists of a shelving unit with boxes arranged to mirror the layout of the Periodic Table. This might be most easily achieved as an IKEA hack.

Label each of the boxes appropriately and you can tell your kids ‘Your lunchbox is in Californium’.

Other suggestions include:
–fill with copies of journals in a periodicals library.
–lie it flat, cover with glass and you have a Periodic (Coffee) Table.