People who try to filter their motorcycles in between traffic get very good at judging the gaps they can get through.
When they add panniers to their machine, mistakes can easily be made.
Today’s invention is a pair of lights, possibly low-power lasers, mounted on one’s panniers so that they reflect off cars ahead.
If no spots of light are seen by the rider, he/she knows his whole machine can fit through with no risk to wing mirrors/ side panels.
Today’s invention is a novel solution to the problem of motorcycle theft.
It takes the form of a folded-up sheet of steel, small enough to be carried on a bike, and intended to make the machine unliftable. It also makes the lock on the back wheel inaccessible to eg disc cutters and angle grinders.
Imagine working or living in a skyscraper where the view was always changing.
Today’s invention is a tower building in which the floors themselves act as elevator cars.
The arrows indicate how the half-floor units move. The rate of movement might be one floor height per day, so that everyone gets a chance to occupy the penthouse occasionally. This would equalise the pricing for occupants (although it would be a costly building to construct and maintain).
In the event of an emergency requiring evacuation, each of the half-floor units could collapse vertically to say a 1m high crawlspace and the elevator mechanism would then bring all the floors to within jumping distance from the ground.
(Obviously there would need to be an elevator of the conventional kind, for daily use, but that is not shown).
Sometimes it’s the small things that drive you crazy for ages, without your really noticing.
One of these is that many pens have a cap which can be placed on the pen’s barrel-end so that the clip presses into your hand.
Today’s invention is a pen with a key (blue) moulded into its surface corresponding to a slot in the pen’s cap (red).
This ensures that the clip will always be attached in the correct orientation -ie without colliding with one’s hand.
A better design would involve a cam-shaped slot, so that just pushing the pen top on would cause it to rotate into the right position.
Today’s invention offers a way to waste less water during toilet flushing.
A load cell in the seat monitors the weight of material deposited in the toilet bowl as a function of time (by the decrease in weight on the seat).
Urination would be detected by a longer duration unloading (and ignored by this mechanism), whereas defecation would be signalled by more intermittent unloadings (you get the picture).
This allows the system to determine whether an intense flush is required (characterised by a single, large unloading event) or if the usual, small flow will suffice.
Today’s invention offers a way to win at the game of craps.
Based on some work by Polish researchers, if you throw a die, in a given orientation, onto a soft surface, it is much more likely to land in that original orientation.
You obviously can’t roll out a cushion on the craps table, but you could surreptitiously spray a small volume of sulphur hexafluoride onto it. These tables are shaped like a bath and so the ultra heavy gas would form a still layer: a cushion onto which the dice can be thrown.
This gas is colourless and odourless, so a tube down the sleeve linked to a low pressure bladder squeezed beneath one armpit should do the trick.
Just remember that you need to play the game a long time to win big, the dice motion may look a bit slow -and it’s important not to get caught.
Ever in search of ways to generate income from inventing (it really shouldn’t be this difficult) I’ve been having some interesting discussions with the Patreon legal people. I wonder who actually reads the small print?
They have made some valiant efforts to make clear what their user agreement actually means. Those cute cartoons, that artsy people will surely warm to, and all those downhome, monosyllabic explanations must surely indicate trustworthiness (Don’t do bad stuff ).
Until you come across this:
You will indemnify us from all losses and liabilities, including legal fees, that arise from these terms or relate to your use of Patreon.
So, creatives, be warned. They won’t be so cuddly when some patent troll starts suing them. If you upload anything which a troll thinks can score them a buck, by threatening legal action, you pay Patreon’s legal costs.
Formula 1 racing always has to be generating some controversy. One recent one centres on driver safety: specifically, how to prevent drivers being hurt by flying debris, whilst maintaining the open-cockpit nature of the sport/business.
Various cages and shields have been suggested.
Today’s invention offers a solution that leaves the cars looking pretty much as they do now (ie not very pretty).
Each car would be fitted with a fringe of carbon fibre strands (the spacing could be varied depending on the level of protection required). These strands could be made strong enough to withstand braking and wind forces, yet so thin that they would be effectively undetectable on a tv image.
Each strand would have a wire loop inside so that if the fibre was broken, an electrical signal would be detectable by an onboard computer dedicated to this task.
Any object flying towards a driver’s helmet would break a strand or two and, within a couple of milliseconds, fire some pyrotechnics which would raise a bulletproof but transparent shield (shown as red) in front of the driver.
There is a growing penchant among motorcyclists, especially females, for hugging each other.
Sometimes this will happen after a ride, when they are all still wearing helmets.
The result can be a clashing of helmets (people tend to forget that they are wearing them).
Aside from slight embarrassment, this has the effect of potentially damaging their life saving equipment.
Today’s invention is therefore a gel pad with an adhesive backing which can be attached to one’s helmet in the collision-prone zone.
In the event of a carpark hug, no damage will be done.
The pads could even have a large set of lips marked on them. Over time, the wearing off of this symbol could become a treasured sign of one’s popularity.
This idea could be extended to American football, where helmet butting is a sign of congratulation/affiliation.
It seems that surfers, when they find themselves carried out to sea, are in much more danger from dehydration than sharks.
Today’s invention is therefore a surfboard with a built-in recess which would accommodate a plastic bowl and a portable desalination pump.
A surfer who drifted away from shore could therefore make enough drinking water to stay alive for a much longer time. I’d recommend some energy bars, some uv protection and a few shark repellent tablets as well.
