Culture
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The Issue: In some climates, outdoor swimming pools (Fig. 1) are kept filled with water year-round, but are covered during the colder months. These covered-up pools waste a lot of outdoor real-estate that could be put to alternative use. Proposal: The pool will need to be covered anyway, so we can take advantage of this…
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Background: With the advent of “the Internet of things” (or “IoT” if you prefer), it has become possible to put electronic gizmos in nearly any consumer product. If you ever wanted to add a speaker, some LED lights, or a GPS tracker into a some random household object, now’s the time! The Issue: Strangely, despite…
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Background: Most musical instruments are capable of playing more than one note a time. This is typically referred to as a “chord.” The Issue: Unfortunately, the list of chords is relatively small and well-understood (Fig 1): once music students learn them, they won’t have any more aspirational chord-learning goals, and will surely become demoralized. Proposal:…
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Background: Many foods require a certain minimum amount of cooking time, yet there isn’t always an obvious visual indicator of “done”-ness. The Issue: As a result of the lack of a visual indicator, a chef must laboriously inspect food by (for example) cutting into it, poking it with a fork, or tasting it. These time-consuming…
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Background: Ramen noodles in a cup (Fig. 1) are a popular so-called “instant” meal, beloved by graduate students, programmers, and a wide variety of individuals who lack culinary pretentions. The Issue: Despite being called “instant” noodles, these noodles actually require a non-zero amount of time to eat! Part of this is due to the fact…
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Background: Imagine a boat: but someone added a canopy, and now it travels underwater (Fig. 1). Now you’ve got a submarine! That’s all the background you need. (Actual submarine construction may be somewhat more complicated.) The Issue: There has been interest lately in putting sails on oceangoing vessels again: this is proposed as a cheap…
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Background: Many types of commonly-available vitamins and medicines are deadly if ingested in large quantities. Unfortunately, small children generally do not understand the concept of “LD50,” and may eat an excessive number of pills. It also doesn’t help that many medications are candy-like in appearance (e.g. compare a coated Advil tablet to an M&M). The…
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Background: People frequently listen to music during their day-to-day activities. In olden times, a person was limited to whatever was playing on the radio, but in the post-iPod world, it’s very straightforward to load up an entire day’s worth of personalized music ahead of time. However, such music can’t react to the events of the…
WorstPlans: updated every Monday since July 2014! 