Where
Things Work RightWhere
Things Work Right
** New ideas added 9/15/04 starting at number 11.
11. Making money from noise -
In the US there are 39 states that now require utilities to allow net-metering,
meaning they have to let companies put
electricity back into the grid and pay them for it. Not long ago
I was taking a tour through one of the our company's
factories and got into a discussion with one of the supervisors about the
huge amount of noise out on the plant floor.
We looked into possible ways to take advantage of it and thought some system
based on a dynamic microphone
might work (dynamic microphones convert sound into electrical energy when
the sound waves push against a
diaphragm, moving a coil back and forth over a magnet.) Passive amplifiers
could have even been added to boost
the decibel level and resulting power. Unfortunately the plant was
shut down before we could do any tests.
There are other places where this line of thinking might turn out to be
profitable though. Planes for instance. 747's
have a big auxiliary power unit (APU) in the rear that produces electricity
for various purposes. If the engine noise
was converted into electricity it might be possible to have a smaller that
could handle the load, thereby decreasing
the overall weight of the plane and giving it better fuel mileage.
Another place would be windmill parks. Having never been to one I
had to do a little research, but it turns out that
the windmills make a lot of noise. Modifying them so they converted
the noise into electricity would make them even
more of a bargain.
12. Silent vacuums revisited -
Couldn't find the original idea here about silent vacuums but after doing
a little research it seems like the main reason
they failed to catch on back in the 40's when they were first introduced
was that women didn't think they were
worked as well because they couldn't hear them. We have the technology
now that would allow them to flip a
switch on and off to confirm it was working whenever they want. The
bagless systems also let you see them
working. In addition to these enhancements we could have a light
bar displayed on the handle of the cleaner. The
harder the vacuum worked (like when it sucks up a small throw rug), the
higher the light would rise up on the bar.
13. Bully blockers -
When a research group was studying sildenafil as a treatment for angina
they noticed one of its unexpected side
effects, erections, but didn't think much about it. Another group
of scientists from Pfizer took advantage of the law
of unintended consequences and turned this side effect into the drug Viagra.
Maybe we should try to do the same thing with one of the dissociative drugs
like ketamine, or an entactogen like
MDMA. In this case the side effect we'd be looking at is empathy.
If the neurological source for empathy could be
found and targeted with a drug that didn't have any of the other negative
side effects common with these classes of
drugs we'd have something we could prescribe for overly aggressive kids
just like we prescribe ritalin of overactive
kids. The same drug could also be prescribed to any adult who was
sentenced to an anger management class.
14. Better baby shoes -
I don't think there's ever been a baby who's worn out his or her shoes
before their feet grew too big to need a new
pair. One way to get more use out of the shoes, especially those used only
for special occasions like patent leather
mary janes or wingtips, would be to make them expandable. A small dial
set into the sole could be turned to make
the shoes a little longer and wider as the child grew. This might encourage
people who were standing on the fence
because the cost/use equation didn't look too good to get off the fence
and buy a pair. Shoe manufacturers would
have to answer a tough economic question though - would the larger market
offset the sales that were lost due to
less shoes being bought?
15. Humming heads -
I read about a phenomena called "otoacoustic emission" in an article at
newscientist.com where there was a dog
who seemed to be humming every where he went. Here's an excerpt from
the article - "In this condition, the normal
hearing pathways in the ears are somehow reversed, so that the cochlear
efferent nerve fibers stimulate outer hair
cells to vibrate and make a noise. Other parts of the ear such as the tympanic
membrane can then amplify the sound,
until you end up like Zoe, humming wherever you go. " Zoe, as you
might have guessed, was the dog.
Never letting a weird thought go to waste, here's a suggestion on how we
could turn that condition into something
useful. People who have had a severe spinal injury can enter what
is called a 'locked-in state", meaning they are so
paralyzed that there's no way for them to communicate with the outside
world. If a cochlear implant was designed so
that it could create these otoacoustic emissions on demand then it might
give these patients a way to communicate.
With a little biofeedback training they could vary the sound waves that
are being emitted and establish a new form of
communication.
16. Fish Finder for my car -
Whenever you see a news story on TV there's always some footage of cars
that tried to make it down a road where
the water turned out to be deeper than they thought, leaving them stranded.
This device would prevent that. It
would consist of 2 parts, one you hooked on to your front bumper and one
that you left in your glove compartment
until you needed it. When the need arose you'd pull the remote out
of the glover and push a button. This would
drop a rod down from the bumper device to the ground (it would have a small
wheel on the end of it so it could roll).
Once you reached the water the depth finder would look several feet ahead
and compare the depth it found to the
clearance under your car. If you couldn't make it a warning would
flash on the remote. You could also turn the
depth finder side to side to see if there was any way to make it down the
road.
This device might be a little pricey but it would offer some major peace
of mind to drivers like myself who run into
roads like this a couple of times a year.
An enhancement: Fish could show up on the remote screen just like they
do on a normal fish finder. It might be
interesting to watch while you're waiting for the water to go down on a
road that got flooded out by a nearby stream
or river. You could see what size fish go by.
17. Expandable trucks -
The problem with small pickup trucks is that once you add a toolbox you're
left with only four feet of bed to haul
things in (at least on my Nissan Frontier pickup). Companies should offer
a slideout option like they have on RV's
that would increase the length of the bed by a couple of feet at the push
of a button or the pull of a latch. There
would have to be a counterweight that slid forward under the bed at the
same time (a possibly a design change that
put the rear axle further back to keep things in balance) but the option
would be worth a few more dollars from my
perspective.
Safety note: It would be a good idea to make sure the switch/latch only
worked when the wheels weren't moving.
Wouldn't want anyone to be able to deploy the slideout when a tailgater
gets too close. (Or maybe we would.)
Another note: I know there are items on the market like the Hitch Hand
but being the lazy type I wouldn't want to
have to go to the trouble of doing things like bolting down plywood to
make the bed. I just want to pull something
with sides on it out, load it up and go.
18. Pop up street signs -
One of the major problems after a hurricane or severe storm is telling
outsiders how to get someplace when all of
the street signs have been blown away. If the kind of help we're talking
about is emergency personnel then this could
be a critical issue.
Here's a solution. Bury a narrow vertical tube beside each existing
sign. The cap on this tube should be held in place
by a cotter pin beneath ground level. A wire would run from the cotter
pin up the regular street sign pool to the sign
itself. During a storm if the sign blew off this would pull out the
cotter pin. Nothing else would happen right then.
Once the storm was over the lid on the tube could be opened and a new pole
lifted out of it, complete with the
appropriate signs. (The signs themselves would have been turned vertically
too so they'd fit in the tube.)
The reason for the cotter pin is simple. It would keep the neighborhood
kids from popping the signs out whenever
they felt like it.
19. Scarecrow flagmen -
While waiting for a flagman to turn his pole from stop to slow recently
I began to wonder what it was that made him
different from a railroad crossing gate. Two things came to mind:
1. He can move from site to site.
2. He can intimidate people into stopping when they need to.
Basically he's a portable gate with a mean face. If we pay the guy
8 bucks an hour to stand there holding the sign
then that comes out to about 16,000 a year. It would be a lot cheaper
to get rid of him and replace him with a
portable crossing gate. This gate would be remotely controlled by
the flagman who's controlling the other end of the
street. A video screen on it would let him see how far the cars were
backing up so he'd know when to raise and
lower the gate. If we really thought we had to, we could make the
screen big enough to let the first car in line see his
face, retaining the scarecrow factor.
20. Survival made easy -
The Iridium satellite system, which was created so remote phone calls could
be made from anywhere on the
planet, missed a sizable niche market. Digital cameras and camcorders
could have been linked to the satellites
so pictures could be instantly sent to home computers as e-mail attachments.
This would have eliminated the need
to worry about size restrictions when designing the cameras and relieve
users of the burden of keeping track of
whatever recording media they're using. It would have also given people
an unlimited amount of filming time.
That's just the start of what they could have done though. Imagine
a service where you could take a picture of
some plants, wait a minute, and then get back an overlay on top of the
picture showing which plants were edible
and which were poisonous. The original picture would have been transmitted
to a central site for processing via the
satellites and the overlay sent back the same way. (If enough local processing
power ever becomes available the
camera itself could figure out what you were looking at.) Anyone who had
one of these cameras would have a
much better chance of surviving in the wilderness, making them the ideal
choice for campers, survivalists, and the
military.
The chances of survival could be increased even further by adding a GPS
to the camera. A picture of the area
could be sent to you on request, giving you some idea how to make your
way back to civilization. If you couldn't
move from there due to injuries, you could request a picture of edible
plants in the area (in case you didn't want to
just randomly take pictures until you found some) and then confirm that
they're edible by taking a picture of
whatever comes closest to the suggested plants. (Suggested sources of water
could also be downloaded to your
camera.)
Note #1: An additional comment by 'dobtabulous' from the halfbakery web
site - This device could also help with
diagnosis of illnesses which might compromise your survival ability.
For example, you could send a photo
of your wound/sore/rash etc along with a sound-clip of your screams of
pain and be sent back information
about mitigating symptoms using local plant materials and how to prepare
them.
21. A more democratic democracy -
When cities incorporate now they have 4 different kinds of governmental
structure to choose from, strong
mayor/weak city council, weak mayor/strong city council, etc... It might
be time to add a 5th. Politicians these days
are elected more on the basis of cash, charisma, and cronyism than on their
ability to solve the problems at hand. We
should take away those factors so everyone who wanted to run for office
would do so on a level playing field. Here's
how this form of government would work.
There would be two voting periods, a primary and a runoff.
In the primary, anyone who wanted to run for an office would submit a list
of 5 problems and their solutions to those
problems to the elections commission, which would then print them on a
ballot without naming names. (The
problems could be anything the candidate thought was important.) Voters
would vote for the whichever set of
problems and solutions they thought were best.
In the runoff election, the top 5 winners from the primary would be revealed
and allowed to campaign for office.
Making their identities public at this stage would let people consider
the past histories and sanity of the candidates
in their decision-making process. Whoever won the runoff election would
then not only have the chance to implement
his or her own solutions, they'd also have all those other problems and
solutions from the election to use as a resource
for making their community even better.
22. Telesight fashions -
Here's a new business idea for anyone interested in taking a risk. Combine
the idea that subliminal images effect
people's emotions with the idea that people want to project a certain image
when they choose the clothes they wear.
I'm thinking about a line of t-shirts for example, where you could pick
the mood you want to project - romantic,
aggressive, funny - from specific sections on the rack. Each t-shirt would
have two pictures on it, a normal one you
could see and a subliminal one hidden inside of it.
23. Removed
24. Electric wheels -
A semi-trailer truck driving down the interstate is riding on top of 5
turbines, its axles, wasting all the energy they
produce as it goes. There should be some way to recapture a little of that
energy.
For instance, picture two metal rings, one inside the other, with a layer
of bearings between each. The inside ring
would have a magnet attached to it and be clamped to the center of a wheel's
rim, forcing it to spin at the same rate
as the wheel. The second ring would have a coil around the bottom half
of it and be weighted to keep it from rolling
when the inner ring rolled. This device, an electromagnet, would generate
electricity whenever the truck was in
motion. Sticking one on each rim would give you 10 generators.
The electricity from these generators could be used for several things, ranging from the simple to the farfetched.
A.. Instead of keeping the engine running to keep the coolers running when
a refrigerated truck is stopped, the
coolers could powered by batteries which would be continually recharged
every time the truck moves. This
would result in a net fuel savings.
B. An electric wheel could be added to the truck. This wheel would kick
in when the truck was going fast enough for
the generators to keep it turning. With it helping to push the truck along,
less conventional fuel should be needed.
C. The electricity could be stored in batteries which would then be discharged
at a truck stop in exchange for some
sort of energy credit (a discount on fuel for example). If the discharge
process converted the energy from the
batteries into microwaves it would be a win-win situation for both the
trucking company and the truck stop.
25. Blown away -
Someone should design a flat hose with holes in it that would be laid in
a gutter that could be hooked up to a leaf
blower via a specialized attachment. Then all you'd have to do to clean
out your gutters is turn on the blower and it
would blast the leaves out of the gutter. (A modified version of this could
also be designed to sit along the outside
edges of the frame that supports screens around pools. It would make the
job of clearing off the debris a lot easier.)
In order to keep a steady airflow for the length of the hose either the
diameter of the holes could be increased
towards the far end or valves requiring different amounts of pressure before
they'd open could cover each hole.
26. Wandering birds -
Many migratory species rely on the earth's magnetic field to get their
bearings during migration. If the field slowly
reverses itself would these species have enough time to evolve members
capable of following the new logic? If the
field completely disappears, like it has done in the past, would the migratory
species disappear with it? If a lot of
bird species disappeared that might cause an explosion in the population
of species they feed on, insects, and a
reduction in the population of species they help procreate, plants. This
doesn't sound like it would be a good thing
for us. (On 4/10/02 there was an article at www.newscientist.com
describing how evidence is mounting that the
fields might already be in the process of flipping. Check out their
archives for the article entitled 'Anomalies hint at
magnetic pole flip'.)
27. Mideast politics: The adoption solution -
Instead of giving Israel 3 billion a year, why not create an adoption agency
in both countries and fund them at 1.5
billion apiece each year. The only condition would be that Palestinians
have to adopt Israeli orphans and Israelis
have to adopt Palestinian ones. The way things are going now, there should
be more than enough orphans available
shortly.
Truce zones could be created inside each country where both sides would
agree not to carry out attacks or train
soldiers.
Over time, the truce zones would have to be expanded to accommodate their
growing population, leaving less and
less acceptable targets. (It would also make living in those zones desirable
to middle-roaders on both sides of the
fence.)
The safety of the people inside each zone would be entrusted to a new armed
force comprised of members from
both sides. As the zones grew, the size of this force would need to grow.
After awhile there would be a fully armed
third party in both countries.
The 3rd armed force is intended to offset something like Hamas which might
try to attack the zones just because
people were getting along too well in them. If the force struck back, Arafat
couldn't be blamed (thus avoiding a
civil war in Palestine); if a group in Israel attacked a zone and the force
struck back, the Palestinians couldn't be
blamed.
28. Ghost torture -
The Science Channel had a program on not too long ago where they were investigating
different kinds of
paranormal phenomena and trying to come up with a rational explanation
for it. During one test they put a band
that completely blocked all visual stimuli around the head of their test
subjects and then aimed electromagnetic
pulses at different regions of the brain. This caused a lot of fear-based
hallucinations, including the appearance of
ghosts. It would be interesting to subject some terrorists to prolonged
periods of this. No physical harm would be
done and we'd turn off the fear as soon as they told us what they'd planned
to do next and who was still out
there waiting to do it. A humane sort of torture, so to speak.
29. Telepathic theory -
Quantum entanglement of the qualia (the point inside our heads where thoughts and emotions converge).
When two atoms are entangled, any change to one immediately creates the
same change in its twin with no
measurable force being transferred between the two. This theory suggests
that the same action could account for
telepathy with the subjects' qualia taking the place of atoms. Concentration,
or 'intent', might be the entangling
force, so any fluctuation in its strength would cause the entanglement
to appear and disappear.
In the past there have been experiments that resulted in a 35% success
rate in the exchange of information
occurred when mere guessing should have produced a 25% exchange rate. It
would be interesting to repeat
those experiments with subjects specifically chosen based on their ability
to maintain a high degree of
concentration
30. Out of body surgery -
Here's another idea from the quantum world. It should become real
in about 40 or 50 years from now. Since we
can already entangle two clusters of atoms, each being thousands of atoms
thick, someday we should be able to
entangle billions of them. (Cesium ions in small cylinders are being
used for this at the present time.) In this distant
future where when whatever you do to one group of atoms has an immediate
and predictable effect on the other
you could perform out of body surgery. The patient would be put into
one cylinder and a cloud of atoms pumped
into another cylinder of equal size. Once all of the atoms in the two cylinders
was oms were entangled you could
perform surgery on the cloud and have it fix the patient. That's about
as non-invasive as you can get.
31. Why no deja vu?
We've all had the experience of suddenly feeling like we're doing something
we've done before. The question is,
why don't we have that feeling when we really are doing something exactly
the same as we've done it before? I've
seen the same intro on movie screens, clicked on an e-mail icon to check
my mail, and turned right at the light
when leaving the neighborhood hundreds of times, and never once did I get
a feeling of deja vu. Why not?
32. Been where, done what -
Speaking of deja vu. Someone should do a study on deja vu experiences
to see if they're taking place in clusters
based on date, location, or age group. If an epidemiologist found some
sort of a pattern then it might be possible
to predict where and when the next occurrence would take place - sort of
a pre vu of deja vu.
33. Anti-snoring pillows -
These pillows would have an embedded microphone that listened for a certain
decibel level being reached
continually over a set time span - say 30 seconds or so. When it detected
that pattern it would expand a small,
irritating section of itself directly beneath the spot where the most weight
was also being detected, forcing the
person to roll over. If the person resorted to sleeping without pillows
an anti-snoring mat covering most of the
mattress could be designed to do the same thing.
34. Removed
35. Twisted lights -
If gravity slightly bends the path light takes, how can we be sure we're
looking at the real point of origin for a light
that took 10 billion years to reach us? Depending on how many black holes,
neutron stars, etc... that it had to go
around, the true origin could be several degrees from where we see it.
It could also make a closer light source seem
farther away - a light beam that had to slalom around hundreds of objects
would take longer to get here (because its
real path was longer) than one that started further away and took a straight
shot to get here.
36. Maidens again -
Someone should create a company that will work with state governments on
behalf of newly divorced women who
want to change their last name back to their maiden name. This company
would use the divorce decree to change
names everywhere they needed to be changed - drivers license, credit cards,
bank accounts, voter registration, etc...
- offering one-stop shopping for a small fee to make the process easier.
37. Nothing is infinite or unique -
Picture this. You're sitting in front of a computer and one pixel in the
top left screen is lit; all the others are blank.
The program moves the pixel across the screen, point by point, column by
column, row by row. When it gets to the
bottom two pixels appear at the top of the screen. The leftmost one stays
where it is while the one on the right works
its way down the screen. When it gets to the bottom, the one at the top
moves over a spot and the one at the bottom
jumps back up beside it to repeat its journey down the screen. By
adding one pixel at a time and following this
pattern, pretty soon everything that can be pictured will be pictured.
That's an important point - everything that ever
has or will exist in the visible universe will have been pictured.
Now, change the screen to a 6 foot cube and trade the pixels for elements.
Sooner or later everything that can exist
will exist in that cube; everything you can ever do will be some form of
combination. Given enough time, repeats will
have to occur in the future and must have occurred in the past (if eternity
exists in either direction). Given enough
space and matter they'll be repeating right now out there too.
Could this explain deja vu?
Could this explain deja vu?
38. Another deja vu theory -
Recent scientific evidence shows that we unconsciously decide to do something
about half a second before we
consciously make the decision to do it. Aside from the obvious free
will questions this brings up another question
- what would happen if the gap increased? Our sense of self, or orientation
point, has been found to be in the
left parietal lobe (the place in our heads where the 'I' is located).
Since it has a physical position there's no reason
the nerve inputs attached to it couldn't suffer a slowdown. If the
gap increased significantly now and then it would
explain why we sometimes suddenly feel like we're doing something we've
already done. In reality we would have
already done it. Our conscious mind is just trying to catch up to
that fact.
39. Removable me's -
Speaking of the left parietal lobe, it would be nice if we could switch
the nerve inputs going into it from a source
person to a target person. The target would then be able to retrieve
all of the memories the source possessed. It
would make getting information out of serial killers and terrorists a whole
lot easier.
40. Wired wheeled weed wackers -
Someone should design a weed whacker that works like this - you unwind
the spool of wire it's connected to,
laying it close to the edges you want trimmed, and then let the wheeled
whacker follow the wire back to its starting
point, taking up the slack and trimming the grass as it goes
41. Skyscraper fire escapes -
This suggestion would require one small office on each side of a skyscraper
on every floor to be set aside as a
fire escape. In the event of a fire someone would go into the office
and release a catch holding back a long metal
arm that would telescope out the window to a point about 20 feet beyond
the edge, far enough to avoid any flames
coming out of the windows below. Once the pole was fully extended
a guide wire would roll down the tube and
drop to the street. The minute it hit the pavement a small charge
would go off like it does on an airbag, anchoring
the wire to the pavement. Next, a series of bars would unfold under
the pole. They'd probably look something like
pogo sticks and have self-locking handgrips (and foot grips too if necessary).
People would simply lock themselves
onto the pole and ride it down. Each pole would be attached to its
own spool of wire to control the descent and
these wires would have a ring on them to keep them in line with the guide
wire. (There'd be a slot beneath the
telescoping pole to smooth out the slide down from the office to the end
of the pole.)
After the fire was put out the street would probably have to be repaved
but that would be a small price to pay for
the lives that were saved.
42. Where's Waldo -
Now that desktop publishing is commonplace, someone should offer personalized
books for children. An example
would be something along the lines of Where's Waldo with the child's picture
inserted in Waldo's place. There
could be pages for where's mom and where's dad too (no sarcastic comments
about the latter please).
43. Genetically modified drug crops -
If we really want to cut down on illegal drug traffic then we should stop
burning the fields and start air-dropping
seeds over the farms. The seeds would be genetically modified ahead of
time to make the plants possess an adverse
side effect. We would, in a sense, pollute the crop. People would be a
lot less likely to take something if they
couldn't be sure one of it's side effects was to give any many who took
them huge breasts. (Or some other
unpleasant attribute.)
44. Martian hide-outs -
If Mars was ever inhabited by intelligent life, that life would have probably
tried to survive underground as the planet
dried up (assuming it just didn't come here). The most logical place to
do this would be where the water was
expected to last the longest and the climate was the most predictable -
the poles. It might be interesting to send up
some seismic instruments and check beneath the poles for straight lines
- nature abhors straight lines so these would
be evidence of intelligence.
45. Slipping squirrels -
As part of its research into non-lethal methods of crowd control, the U.S.
army has developed a gel that keeps
anything from sticking to whatever surface it's sprayed on - sand, concrete,
plastic, etc... They should turn this into
a commercial product and let people spray it on the wires leading to bird
feeders. That way squirrels would keep
falling off before they reached the feeder.
46. Hammock rockers -
This would simply be a pendulum on a box that you attached to one end of
the hammock. The rechargeable battery
in the box would swing the pendulum back and forth, gently rocking you.
47. Dam toilets -
I think I'd be willing to pay about 25 bucks for a stylish and disposable
Mae West kind of lifejacket that you could
wrap around the bottom of a toilet at home so when it started to overflow
you'd just pull a tab and a trough would
inflate to catch the water while you're trying to get it shut off. That
would save a lot of mopping up and occasional
carpet damage.
Businesses might also be interested in a high end model that had a small
electric pump attached to the back of it
(like those that are used to inflate inner tubes and air mattresses). With
the pump neatly hidden behind the toilet in
ordinary times, you'd pull the tab to inflate the tube during an emergency,
plug in the pump, and extend a collapsible
hose that could steer the overflow from the trough to the nearest available
receptacle. That would have to be much
cheaper than dealing with the damage caused by an overflow from a toilet
on the 2nd or 3rd story of a building.
48. Stonehenge -
I was looking at an aerial photo of Stonehenge the other day and noticed
a flat-topped man-made mound to the
north of it (at least north as far as the picture was aligned). The far
larger stone circle at Avebury also has the same
kind of mound near it. If both the stone circles and mounds were built
for religious reasons, it wouldn't be a stretch
to imagine the mounds were meant to be moons and the circles earth. If
this turns out to be true it would be
interesting to see if they also built something to represent the sun. Let's
see, the sun is about 389 times the distance
between the moon and the earth so where would that put it's symbolic mound.
Possibly Glastonbury Tor? That's a
huge mound to the east of both Stonehenge and Avebury where legend says
King Arthur was buried. (Some people
might also find it interesting to know that there's a place called the
Chalice Well in Glastonbury where the Holy Grail
is supposed to be buried. This would tie in nicely with Glastonbury Tor
being the sun to Stonehenge's earth.)
49. Smarter union tactics -
I once worked for a company where the plant workers were going to go out
on strike for higher wages. They
wanted us to support them and not cross the picket lines even though they
weren't agitating for anything on our
behalf. The end result was that new owners closed the plant down and moved
production elsewhere.
I'm waiting for the day when the unions finally wake up and realize each
time they get a raise the cost of living goes
up, getting them nowhere. They stay even while the rest of us fall behind
unless we go on strikes of our own. They
would get much more support and be much better off is they fought to lower
the cost of their products instead. The
cost of living would go down, giving everyone a net raise, and they'd find
us much more supportive.
50. The Ride-Along Mechanic -
How many times have you tried to describe a weird sound your car was making
to a mechanic and felt like he was
trying hard to hide his amusement at your attempts? The Ride-Along
Mechanic would take care of that. It would
simply be a portable recorder you'd turn on whenever you heard the noise.
It would have to be much more sensitive
than the average recorder, almost like a hearing aid turned way up.
If you had one of those though you could just hit
replay and the mechanic could hear the sound for himself exactly the way
you heard it.
51. Sidestepping Einstein -
According to Einstein's theories time travel is possible but you can only
go back in time to the point when the first
time machine was built. We could get around this just by finding
a time machine built by another species prior to the
time we built ours.
52. Knee airbags (stiffeners) -
Sometimes the elderly use a walker not because they can't move around on
their own. Instead they use it because
they don't trust their legs. After their legs have unexpectedly given
out on then a couple of times they won't the
security of always knowing they've got something to grab that will keep
them from hitting the ground. It seems like
someone should be able to design a set of knee bands that could give them
all the security they need. The bands
would stiffen up whenever they sensed a sudden change (sort of like airbags)
and keep the legs from buckling. This
would free all of those people from having to depend on their walkers.
53. Unlocking the locked-in patient -
Another article at newscientist.com described something called "Thought
Translation Devices" (TTD's) that are
being used to help patients who are completely paralyzed communicate with
the outside world. The devices rely on
the patient's ability to steer a cursor by modulating their brainwaves.
Only very gifted patients are able to do this due
to the difficulty of changing brainwave patterns.
This gave me another thought though. Awhile back there was an experiment
done in Switzerland on a patient with
severe epilepsy that accidentally caused the patient to have an out-of-body
experience. By stimulating the same
region of the brain with electrodes they could reproduce that experience
over and over again. Since then researchers
have been able to get the same results using a strong magnetic field.
I'm wondering if people have any control over
their point of awareness when they're outside of their body, and if they
can move that point to the left or right. If they
can move and we can spot a difference in the brain when they do it then
we might be able to make a device that's
easier for them to communicate. Moving left would be a dot, moving right
a dash. In effect, they could use changes
in their position to tap out Morse code.
I know it sounds kind of strange (not unlike a lot of these ideas), but
if it worked it would be a lot easier than trying
to control a cursor by making the brainwaves change back and forth. If
nothing else, the act of getting outside of their
bodies for a bit and exercising some voluntary control of their movements
should have a therapeutic effect.
Here's another thought. When the doctors at Massachusetts General
hospital created an experiment to test whether
patients undergoing surgery really had had the out-of-body experiences
they reported the results all came back
negative (they couldn't repeat the message that was being displayed on
a monitor facing away from the operating
room table). It would be interesting to rerun the experiment using
people who said their point of awareness had
shifted outside of their bodies using the method described in the previous
paragraph. And it would be more than
just interesting if it turned out they really were outside their bodies.
54. Robotic golden retrievers -
Robot dogs are coming on the market now but they don't do much of anything
useful. It would be nice to have one
that could store a picture of your tennis balls, baseballs, or golf balls
in its memory and then retrieve them on a voice
command. One of the minor irritants in playing these sports is going around
and picking up the balls just to keep
playing, especially when you're alone and hitting tennis balls against
a practice wall or driving golf balls across an
empty field. Since computers can be taught to recognize simple voice commands,
you could even teach it to go left,
right, or backwards in order to help it find the balls.
55. A thought experiment -
Imagine we're sitting at a computer that's able to control where the Hubble
telescope is aimed at. Picking a position
at random, we'd be able to see a point roughly 13.5 billion light years
away. The light coming from there originated
several hundred million years after the universe was created. Next we move
the telescope to a point in the opposite
direction. Again we'd see a point roughly 13.5 billion light years away.
Move it again and the same thing would
happen. Every point we looked at would be about the same distance
away. So there you go - confirmation that
we are the center of the universe.
56. Illegal separation -
If the diameter of the universe is 27 billion light-years across in the
above scenario, how did any two of those light
sources get as far apart as they are now when they were only less than
a billion years old?
57. Swimming pool shelters -
Wherever there's the possibility of a hurricane or tornado and no possibility
of evacuating in time, swimming pools
could be converted into shelters two different ways.
1st way: Drain the pool and then cover it with a very shallow-sloped A-frame
roof. The A-frame would consist of
two-foot wide panels that were designed to fold under one another for easy
storage. (This would only work in areas
where the water table wouldn' t rise high enough to pop the pool out of
the ground when it was emptied.)
2nd way: Submerge an inflatable room at the deep end, using a weighted-lining
to keep the room underwater. As a
last resort this would provide a cushion of water to separate you from
flying debris and also lower the risk of your
house collapsing on top of you. (Something similar to those oxygen canisters
being sold as a fire escape enhancement
would have to be included in the design to keep the air breathable in the
room.)
58. How to bring someone out of a coma -
The body releases endorphins, our natural painkillers, when we're in pain.
Suppose the body felt a fatal blow was
coming. Would it release endorphins ahead of time to blunt the pain?
If it did and the blow turned out not to be fatal,
would it have any way to get rid of the endorphin overdose since it never
expected to have to do so? Along those
lines, could something akin to Naxolone (Narcan), the heroin antidote,
bring someone out of an endorphin-induced
coma?
Another possibility -
There is strong evidence to suggest that subjective time is determined
by one's current metabolic rate. (associated
with the hormone Thyroxine). In children, a slight increase in rate
can lead to a marked increase in the subjective
experience of time - one becomes speeded-up to the extent that, say, one
hour to your average person is 1.5 - 2.0
hours for the child.
Is it possible that people in a coma or catatonic state are experiencing
a negative time distortion effect - instead of
subjective time being longer than objective time, maybe subjective time
is much shorter. If 1 day of real time equals
1 second or less of subjective time then patients might be reacting according
to their own internal frame of reference.
It would be interesting to see what would happen if their Thyroxine level
was increased.
On another note, if subjective time slows down when you're metabolism
increases and speeds up when you're
metabolism slows down, then time must go by real quick for dead people
(they have an extremely slow metabolism).
Some studies have shown they're still exhibiting mental activity long after
being declared clinically dead.
59. Axle heaters -
Here's a way out of the snow or off of the ice - axle heaters - when you
turn on your engine it would heat the axles
(and the tires connected to them) to about 120. That should help melt the
ice under the tires so you can get the car
moving again. If you've already spun the tires enough to dig in and leave
the car sitting helplessly on a block of snow,
they would also melt the snow under the axles. The axles could be
even hotter if we wanted - the failure point in tires
is around 200 degrees so 140 or 150 should be no problem. Normal heaters,
RF emitters, or modified ultrasonic
welders could be used to get the heat where it's needed.
Speaking of RF emitters, they could be attached to the inside of gutters
on a device that would swing up out of the
way when not in use and swing down when they were needed. The heat
from them could at least clear away the ice
blocking the opening to the gutter, giving somewhere for the melting ice
to go.
60. Sleepwalking for kids, sleep paralysis for teenagers -
The incidences of sleepwalking in children decrease as they near puberty.
The onset of puberty is also when the vast
majority of people who have experienced sleep paralysis report their first
episode of it. Could the sleepwalking
children be lacking the chemical that the sleep paralyzed have too much
off? If they do then maybe all we need to do
is give the children a small dose of it each night to keep them safely
in bed and give teenagers a dose of its opposite
when they're reporting sleep paralysis (which is often accompanied by extreme
nightmares).
61. We weren't home -
If an intelligent species more than 100,000 light years away from earth
scanned their night sky looking for intelligent
species they wouldn't have found us. In fact, they'd have to be closer
than 5000 light years always to see anything
resembling a civilization. If they wanted to hear radio waves they'd have
to be closer than 100 light years. In effect
this probably means we shouldn't look any further than 200 light years
away to find someone who might be sending
a message back to us (taking into account the back and forth traveling
time required).
62. Ultimate time capsule -
Any sufficiently advanced race could create a time capsule that would last
billions of years just by placing it near the
event horizon of a black hole where time would almost seem to stop for
the capsule. If another advanced race came
along and plucked the capsule out of its orbit they would find a fairly
new-looking artifact that might be billions of
years old. This wouldn't be a bad place to store a library.
63. Dog repellent -
Recently there was an article in the news about the first truly effective
shark repellent researchers have been able to
come up with. It turns out that the smell of dead sharks repels sharks.
Along those same lines maybe the smell of a
dead dog would repel dogs chasing a jogger. Adding it to a can of pepper
spray couldn't hurt. Worst case it does
nothing and you wind up with both the dogs and a flock of vultures chasing
you down the street. At the least the
vultures wouldn't nip at you while you were moving. That might even improve
your jogging speed.
64. Round and round we go and nothing happens?
The earth and moon rotate in synchronicity around their center of gravity,
a point about a 1000 miles below the
earth's crust. If this center of gravity continually moves through the
crust as they spin around it, does it do anything?
65. Frozen Ferris Wheel -
Imagine a small, desktop-sized toy Ferris Wheel. Each bucket on the wheel
is positioned in 10 degree increments on
the rim of the wheel. Nothing is in the bottom bucket. In the first bucket
on the left, at the 10 degree mark, there's a
small magnet. In the next bucket above it on the left (at the 20 degree
mark), there's a little bit bigger magnet.
Continuing in this clockwise direction, each bucket gets an increasingly
bigger magnet until you reach the bucket at
270 degree mark (3 o'clock on your watch if it's not a digital watch).
Every bucket after that is empty.
Now for the fun part. There's a wood axle in the middle of this Ferris
Wheel and it has one wood spoke attached to
it, pointing straight down. A little ways up the spoke there's a hinged
piece of panel that looks sort of like a hood. If
the spoke was turned to the left this hood would move away from it a little
bit but not too far. Okay, now we attach
a piece of iron to the end of the spoke. If the calculations work out then
this spoke will be attracted to the 1st bucket,
then the 2nd, then the 3rd, etc... since each bucket would exert a stronger
and stronger magnetic pull on it. When it
passed the 180 degree mark (pointing straight up) the magnets would continue
to pull it in a clockwise direction.
Shortly after that the hood on its hinge would be pulled back down towards
the spoke thanks to gravity. This hood
would be made out of magnetic wood paneling so when it completely covered
piece of iron on the end of it the
magnets attached to the Ferris Wheel would no longer be able to effect
it. Gravity would pull the spoke the rest of the
way back down to its original starting position. The spoke would go round
and round until...hmm...I'm not sure what
would stop it.
Note: If the spoke stops at a balance point between magnets then a flat
piece of magnetic wood could be attached
underneath it, between the spoke and the hooded piece. This enhancement
would cut off the magnetic wave from
the lesser magnet as soon as it passed leaving the higher one free to pull
the spoke all the way to it.
66. An improved railroad crossing -
As the gate comes down a set of the same kind of metal teeth used to protect
cars from being stolen at car
dealerships should rise up out of the ground. No one would deliberately
puncture all of their tires just to beat the
gate. If that's too drastic then we could just add heavy metal wires
to the gate itself. They'd hang against the gate
when it was up and hang down from it when it was down. That way people
would have to be willing to get their
cars all scratched up if they wanted to beat the gate.
As a side note, we were waiting at a crossing in Texas one time for this
real long train to go by. While we were
there an ambulance pulled up behind us with its sirens wailing. It had
to just sit and wait there too. Seems like there
should be some way to get across (over) the train in these kinds of emergencies
(unless we happened to be there
during the only time it's ever happened).
67. Faster than the speed of light (part 1) -
Imagine building a pair of scissors in space. The handle would be normal-sized
but the blunt blades would be
187,000 miles long. If you put a roller right where the blades intersect
when they're open and then closed the
handles in one second, the roller would travel faster than the speed of
light as the blades closed. With no friction in
space there would be nothing to impede the blades from closing. If friction
from the blades threatened to burn the
roller it could always be magnetically suspended between the two (adding
a cowling of some sort on the sides to
keep the roller from popping out).
A side note for the practical scientists. If you start closing the
scissors faster you could shorten them an equivalent
amount. I wonder how short they'd have to be to run an experiment? Shouldn't
be hard to calculate. You'd just
have to figure out the fastest the scissors handles could be closed and
then build the blades to match.
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