#1724: EvenEvent

So it seems that there maybe some unfairness involved in athletics track design. Perhaps left handers are disadvantaged by having to run counterclockwise.

A figure-of-eight track would be possible but would lead to collisions with lapped runners (or if using an overpass, questions about the effects of uphill vs downhill).

Today’s invention is a way to even up any such imbalance.

Since running around circular curves at constant speed requires, according to simple Physics, no expenditure of work beyond overcoming friction in the direction of motion, I’ve assumed that there is no difference between running bends of differing radius.

The problem of fair track design thus becomes one of ensuring equal total stretches of left- and right-handedness.

The shape above provides this, together with straight sections for sprint events.

#1723: JETtison

The space shuttle had solid rocket boosters and airforce jets have had drop tanks for 50+ years -so the concept of dumping surplus weight (and drag) when in flight is very well established.

Today’s invention extends that to engines. Most airliners can cruise quite efficiently and safely using only two of their four engines (once takeoff has been completed).

The idea would be to use all four jets to gain altitude and then jettison the outer two. This would greatly decrease the weight of the vehicle but most importantly the drag would be similarly cut, allowing the plane to fly very much farther (if slower) using its usual fuel load.

The dropped engines would have parachutes and transponders attached, enabling their recovery and reuse. A small retained fuel supply could even be used to fire the falling engine up just before landing, in order to provide a retro-thrust effect and cushion the impact.

When the newly 2-engined plane landed, it would be refitted with another two temporary propulsion units during turnaround.

(If this is too hair-raising to be seriously considered, how about mounting an engine or two beneath the fuselage so that they could be withdrawn from the airstream, like the undercarriage is?)

#1722: Parallelift

People in busy tower blocks can become stressed by fighting their way onto and off lifts. This is a similar situation is some ways to getting on and off trains…a problem that used to be dealt with by having carriages with multiple side doors.

Today’s invention is a resurrection of this idea as applied to lifts.

Each lift would consist of say 30 cubicles, each big enough to accommodate perhaps 2 people and with a glass door to prevent claustrophobia.

When the lift stops, the cubicles would be accessed in parallel, so that there would be no fighting to get in or out on time. The glass doors would also allow anyone to see which cubicles were available.

These long, narrow lift carriages would each occupy up to half the width of an office block, to allow room for upwards and downwards lifts.

#1721: Centricarrier

I was fascinated when I first learned about objects which have a centre of mass outside themselves.

Today’s invention is a system for carrying a lot of shopping that exploits this kind of geometry.

It consists of a C-shaped trough carried using a pair of padded shoulder straps. This allows a shopper to stand inside the C and thus support the weight of the goods. It also allows reaching for stuff with both hands and with none of the arm strain associated with a heavy basket.

Items of shopping could be placed in this, as a substitute for a hard-to-steer shopping trolley, and then carried home in it (with a suitable zip-on weather cover).

Ths would provide some exercise, as well as an indication during shopping of the weight of goods which would have to be carried home (or hoisted into a car).

#1720: HiJean

If you share some piece of equipment with several colleagues or flatmates, there is sometimes a need to monitor hygiene.

Today’s invention is an internal camera which detects the sudden appearance of a mess within eg a microwave oven (by looking for any contrasting blots or blobs on the pristine white walls/floor) and then captures an image of the next person to open the door.

It would be quite amusing to use face recognition to issue a verbal warning “That’s the second time this week you’ve made a mess [facename = Jean]”

This could be applied to other shared facilities but many of them couldn’t legally be equipped with an imaging device.

#1719: SpinScreen

Making a colourful circular display using lights and the persistence of vision is a technology that you can buy off the shelf to decorate your car’s wheels.

Today’s invention is an upgrade to that approach.

If you are sick of the small size of your smartphone screen, you can clamp the device onto a handle with an internal motor and spin it, as shown.

Running an application simultaneously allows the persistence of vision to show eg messages or even low-res movies on a virtual screen area roughly 3Pi/4 times as big.

#1718: Elavation

Today’s invention is a toilet seat which is hinged at the front of the toilet. This would be (strongly) sprung open by default (ie standing vertically at the front of the bowl).

To use it either simply back onto it and sit down -or to use it standing up, move around to one side.

This has the twin advantages that people with difficulty sitting down smoothly can locate themselves safely. Also, no handling of the seat is required.

(No sign of this anywhere in various patent databases, but that may be because of my limited choice of search terms)

#1717: CrowdCount

Counting the numbers of people in crowds is apparently an increasingly contentious task -given that these estimates are used as a proxy for the strength of feeling behind a range of political causes.

There are already numerous ways to count heads -the most sensible approach seems to me to be to use Amazon’s Mechanical Turk process.

Rather than ask the human operatives who do this work, each to count a whole crowd, today’s invention hands each of them only a small part of an aerial photo of the event (taken by a UAV, if necessary)

Where can you find a collection of willing counters? Send the snapshots to the smartphones of members of the crowd itself (perhaps by displaying a phone number on a hoarding which people in the crowd walk past). They might then enter a draw for some event-relevant prize.

The result would be that each subsection of crowd could be counted by ten of its members, resulting in much higher accuracy.

It could be argued that people on a march might be inclined to overestimate the figures, so this effect could be measured by passing certain calibration shots to distant analysts. A better solution, however, would be to exchange pictures between unrelated events.

#1716: BrainBrake

It seems that concussion-type injuries are exacerbated when the head is accelerated hard about the vertical axis of the neck.

This causes neurons in the frontal brain regions to be particularly severely stretched and damaged.

Today’s invention is a modification to safety helmets so that they can respond to incoming impacts (illustrated as pressure waves in blue).

When accelerometers in the helmet detect a dangerous rotation rate about the neck axis (shown as a cross), compressed air jets located on the chin and forehead are activated, so as to resist the impact force profile.

There would be two jets pointing left and two pointing right to deal with impacts from either side.

This lowers the rotation rate of the head itself, minimising possible injuries to the frontal lobes.

#1715: CrowdCharging

Everyone who meets at my local coffee shop seems to do so mostly at 10:30 am, secondly on the hour and third most frequently, every half hour. This reminds me of the El Farol problem.

Today’s invention offers a way to even out the staff-stress and waiting times.

It is simply to adopt a congestion charge. Make the prices, displayed electronically, all increase as the headcount of customers increases within the coffee shop.

The level of increase required to redistribute the customers to other times of the day, without alienating them by absurdly large pricehikes, would require some experimentation.

It’s probably better to treat it as a dynamic ‘happy hour’ in which prices, which are high by default, decrease as the crowds disperse.