Home Archive by category "Possible inventions" (Page 79)

Category: Possible inventions

#1254: Entropen

New Scientist’s column ‘The Last Word‘ is often a great source of questions just waiting to become inventions.

I was inspired by it today to think about a pen which maximises the lifetime of its ink supply, without greatly diminishing legibility.

Today’s invention is therefore a pen incorporating a tiny inkjet printer with one printhead and a small camera.

As the pen is moved across the surface of the paper, it spits out dots at a uniform rate.

When the camera detects that the pen is changing direction or printing near other dots, it increases its print rate. In this way, sections of straight line, where the information content per dot is low, are represented by small amounts of ink -and vice versa.

(You might build a version with the background dot rate proportional to the acceleration, as determined by a small on-board sensor)

#1253: CarrierBarrier

For all the clever electronic systems on board, naval ships are still vulnerable to attack by torpedo and by small, fast boats.

Aircraft carriers in particular have a turning circle the size of the equator. Today’s invention is intended to help such large ships resist attacks.

It consists of a mobile palette which can be rolled into position to secure a jet plane rigidly to the deck of a carrier. In the event of an attack, palettes would rapidly swarm under parked planes, turn them to align axially with the direction of approaching threat and fire up their engines.

Given the massive power output of a deckload of jets, this would cause the vessel to roll severely. Firing of the engines several times in synchrony with the roll rate would produce waves of huge amplitude -big enough to sink or deflect many forms of near-surface attack.

#1251: HandHoldall

I have noticed that schoolchildren are carrying ever increasing amounts of stuff with them (especially books, despite the one-laptop-per-child initiative). This can’t be good for a developing skeleton.

Today’s invention is therefore a schoolbag which has a handle hinged at one end. The handle requires that its sides be pressed together before the bag is lifted, in order to judge the strength of the user.

When next the bag is set down (detected by sensors within the base), the handle determines whether the bag has been carried for long enough to endanger the user’s joints. If so, the handle de-hinges for a preset period to give the user some time to recover.

The handle can also detect which hand is being used to lift the bag (by the relative pressure on each side) and thus can also encourage a change from left to right (by leaving the hinge open until the hand is changed).

Two such bags could even communicate wirelessly -to ensure eg that nearly equal loads had been placed in each.

#1249: FacePlace

Google Street View is fun and also hugely useful.

Today’s invention is a way for occupants to express their personalities via this medium, if they choose to.

A property owner or tenant could mail a special division of Google with proof of their occupany. They would then receive a software key in the post allowing them to upload a limited number of facial images to append to their home’s image in Street View.

The faces could be automatically checked before being made public (to ensure that they weren’t all Obama or pac-men, etc).

These faces would then would lie on an optional overlay viewable by anyone interested in eg Who lives at number 58?

A slightly more advanced version would allow individuals’ Twitter feeds to be viewed by clicking on their facial images.

#1237: Choppercropper

When you learn to parachute jump, they teach you to perform a special landing technique called a PLF. This is intended to provide a more gradual and thus less jarring impact with terra all too firma.

Today’s invention is to orient a crashing helicopter in such a way that the tail rotor arm hits the ground first, absorbing a lot of the kinetic energy as gradual, gross plastic deformation of this region.

This reorientation could be achieved by eg having small wings extend explosively from the sides of the tail boom at the moment when the main rotor was sensed to have failed.

The tail could be designed to be internally like an automotive crush zone and also potentially angled much less upwards from the horizontal than normal.

This would allow the cabin to avoid auguring in by having its untimely descent slowed (a bit like a factory chimney demolished by the legendary Fred Dinbah).

#1233: RampAmps

I share my surname with the designer of the Titannic, so watching the launch of big ships has a special fascination for me.

Today’s invention is a way to retrieve some of the massive amounts of potential energy stored in a ship under construction on a slipway.

Ships, when the bottle breaks on their bows, currently have to slowed down by various means, including drag chains, in order not to knife across the dock channel and run aground.

Instead, I’d suggest holding the ship in place with chains which are wound around an onshore axle. As the ship descends, the chains turn a giant flywheel attached to a generator. In this way, not only is the ship’s launch more controlled, but some of the energy can be converted to eg light the yard or power its machinery.

#1230: CooledTool

Machine-assembled glazing units are inherently hard to break through -even when one is fortified by adrenalin in an emergency.

Today’s invention is an update to the standard glass-breaking escape hammer often found on public transport.

It takes the form of a conventional hammer, modified by the inclusion of a small, very high-pressure gas cylinder. When the hammer impacts the window surface, this breaks a seal on the cylinder allowing the gas to rush out. This expansion can be arranged to be sufficiently energetic that the glass surface becomes rapidly cooled locally and therefore embrittled.

This in turn allows the hammer to penetrate the window much more easily (a similar system might be used instead of detonator cord in the canopies of fighter jets with ejector seats).

#1229: Wingshields

What’s better than having a car with gullwing doors? A car with two sets of gullwing doors.

Today’s invention is simply to equip such vehicles with a second set of slim covers which fit closely on the normal doors but which can be opened in transit.

When driving at high speed, these act as aerodynamic stabilisers, providing variable downforce and some additional steering effect as their degree of opening is automatically varied.

#1227: FastFace

Fast food is everywhere and so is its discarded packaging.

Those expanded polystyrene boxes are dirt cheap and thermally insulating and many people seem to have few reservations about just dropping them anywhere but in a bin.

Today’s invention is to supply fast food in these boxes but to have them formed into 3D masks. The faces could be of celebrities but even more interesting is the possibility of having a box vending machine in each fast food store capable of scanning a customer face and heat moulding a box in real-time (Perhaps this could be achieved by pressing one’s face into a plastic pillow to form a reusable mould against which a sheet of polystyrene could be vacuum formed).

This would give people pause for thought about pitching their own face on the ground: not least because it could identify them later.

#1226: Jetrims

I was inspired by this guy‘s tip-jet helicopter to apply the principle to terrestrial vehicles.

Today’s invention is a new form of motor in which each wheel has a number of jets fitted on the periphery of its rim. These jets are designed to maintain a horizontal, rearwards pointing orientation as the wheel turns.

Each jet is supplied with a gas at a pressure which is regulated to increase as its height above the road increases.

Since each wheel turns instantaneously about the road contact point (assuming good grip) this distribution of force provides a near-maximal torque characteristic.

This would require a tank of highly compressed gas (eg air) to be carried, but is much less ‘lossy’ than supplying the gas to a conventional car engine to drive pistons etc. Drive to each wheel could be optimised by the use of electronic control valves in each wheel.