Category: Feasible inventions

Everything about car design fascinates me. This evening, I considered this rather silly car and in doing so, it occurred to me that conventional suspension is just daft for certain applications.

As any vehicle hammers down the road or along a track, so its bodywork bounces about atop a collection of springs. Inevitably, much of this motion is not purely elastic and a lot of energy must be lost to the passing airstream in the form of increased turbulence. It must be a particular problem on rough surfaces where the clearance between tyre and bodywork fluctuates wildly.

Today’s invention is a racecar which has no suspension. The axles are rigidly attached to the chassis (allowing almost zero tyre clearance).

The driver sits in a seat which ‘knows’ exactly where, on any given track, it is. This could be achieved using a combination of GPS and trackside signs detected by an onboard camera.

The seat detects, during a few slow practice laps, where all the uneven surface spots are and compensates exactly by driving the seat up and down rapidly, but smoothly (using an electric motor, some tuneable dampers and a small computer). This could even take into account radial tyre compression due to downforce at speed.

Moving the driver about is much more efficient than lifting a large fraction of the whole car, many times per lap.

Googling “bicycle canopy” is a very life-affirming experience for an inventor.

The same can’t be said of the hour I just spent fruitlessly trawling the patent databases in search of prior art in connection with today’s invention.

It was pointed out, by a loyal reader recently, that you can’t ride a bike (successfully) whilst using an umbrella.

Today’s invention is a wrap-around canopy for bikes, like that on a pram, which is designed to allow control of the machine whilst lowering drag and limiting the exposure to the elements of the rider.

A bar is locked onto the seat post and runs at right angles to the direction of travel.

At each end of this are attached numerous canopy segments, some of which may be made of eg thin, solid glass-fibre and others could be made of flexible, waterproof plastic sheet supported by carbon fibre semi-ellipses. The segments might be poppered or zipped together at the edges where they meet.

There would be a transparent section to see through, a gap through which the rider’s legs could extend when stopping and slots for the wheels.

(In a very high crosswind, you might want to fold down the upper 180 degrees).

I heard a particularly graphic description yesterday, by a medic, of the mechanisms by which norovirus transmits itself between people.

Suffice to say that any form of use of a lavatory when you have the bug creates aerosol particles, from which others can be infected (if the queen can get it, then we are all at risk).

In a normal bathroom, the fan which it may contain will actually tend to suck bugs into the room. Today’s invention is therefore a fan unit which fits inside lavatory bowls.

A set of small apertures suck any spray into an exhaust tube before it can be breathed in.

This might be especially valuable in hospitals and could be activated whenever the lid was raised (thus acting as an extra signal to lower the seat, post normal use).

It should also keep the bathroom smelling a bit fresher too.

Wing mirrors are always getting damaged and stolen.

Today’s invention makes use of the fact that certain rear-engined cars already have a filler cap in the wing.

This is used to accommodate a driver’s mirror which rotates out of the wing when the ignition is turned on.

Its rear face is aerodynamically sculpted, so as to reduce drag.

When tha car stops, the wirror is secured back in the wing.

Refuelling requires opening the lockable mirror and putting the nozzle in the duct indicated.

There are lots of clever apps out there that will allow you to point your GPS-enabled smartphone towards the sky and see a detailed map of what celestial bodies are where.

None however, that I can find, offers the functionality included in today’s invention.

Instead of doing the standard thing of compressing stars into meaningless, 2-D constellations, the app which I envisage would portray the stars as dots with different diameters.

Closer stars would have a larger diameter.

This would also allow stars at a common radius to be shown on a translucent sphere (perhaps with different colours for each).

It would then be easy to animate the simulated movement in a given direction from sphere to sphere (and thus backwards in time).

I hate having to faff about with dishwasher tablets (although they seem to be the only way to get dishes clean, without doing the work manually).

It’s bad enough having to use that caustic chemistry, but getting it routinely on my skin has to be a bad idea.

Today’s invention is a small modification to a dishwasher which might help the situation.

The tablet is placed in the housing and the lid closed by sliding as usual.

As the lid passes over the tablet, a spike on the underside of the leading (orange) edge ruptures the plastic bag.

This allows water to flush through without ever having to handle the contents.

When the cycle is complete, open the housing and throw the (clean) packaging away.

Have you ever found yourself going for a picnic or some other outside event and bringing a bottle only to remember that swigging the contents by the neck might not appeal to all participants?

Today’s invention tries, as ever, to uhold standards of decorum.

Each bottle would have a few plastic ‘glasses’ fitted around its neck.

The glasses would need to be moulded carefully so as to nest tightly but still allow air flow inside when you want to separate them from each other and make a toast .

Today’s invention is a bridge which charges tolls to the ships which pass between its piles.

Small boats could pass freely via the shallows on either side.

Larger vessels would have to power their way through gates which would be connected to some weight lifting internal machinery.

In this way, the ships would pay for their passage by expending some work which could be reused by the City to help light its streets etc.