Technology
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Background: Sometimes, if you are groggily taking a shower in the morning without paying much attention, you may forget whether or not you’ve already washed your hair (Figure 1). The issue: You can, of course, always wash your hair again, but then you wasted both time AND shampoo. What if the bottle itself could…
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Background: When people go on vacation, 99% of their pictures are of sunsets and monuments that have been photographed thousands of times before. Sure, that image of a majestic tropical bird perched in front of a waterfall may seem like one-in-a-million shot, but that still means that one hundred variants of it have already been…
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Background: Refrigeration is a great way to preserve foods. But chilling and/or freezing foods can have adverse effects on taste. What if there was a way to stop time for the food WITHOUT chilling it? Proposal: Luckily, physics provides a solution: as an object moves more quickly through space, it experiences the effects of time…
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Background: A lot of kitchen tools have a non-electric version that is hand-cranked: for example, a coffee grinder, ice-cream maker, mixer, or salad-spinner. Additional common hand-powered items include the can opener and pepper mill. The issue: Unfortunately, many of these tools are slow and inefficient to operate by hand. However, if there were some way…
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Background: Slide presentations are now a main ingredient in almost all lectures and presentations (Figure 1). The issue: Computers have made slide presentations extremely easy to make (example in Figure 2), but haven’t helped with one issue: presentations often go on FAR TOO LONG. For example, none of these ideas for promoting short presentations…
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The issue: Imagine this situation: You are a high-ranking member of the royal family. One day, you drive your expensive sports car to your downtown office, park it in the garage, and head to the elevator. You get in, and press the “6” button, to take the elevator to your sixth-floor office. But as soon…
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Background: Most methods of catching fish—with the notable exception of bare-hand catfish noodling (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noodling)—do not involve direct contact with the to-be-fished aquatic life. Proposal: In order to both: make humans more attuned to nature and to promote a fishing method that discourages overfishing… …the following “baleen fishing attachment mesh” is proposed. This “baleen mesh” is a…
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Background: On many web sites for automotive parts (e.g. Amazon, AutoZone), you can specify the exact car that you own. Then, the web site will only show results that work with that car (Figure 1). Fig 1: You can specify the details of the cars in your “garage” and will only see car parts that…
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Background: In the Western custom known as “the handshake,” two individuals greet each other by smooshing their hands together, transmitting every disease (Figure 1). Additionally, this custom can serve as a mini-battle between people with differing ideas of handshake firmness. Fig 1: A clammy and moist hand is offered for your approval. The issue: There…
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Background: You’ve probably heard of a “washer-dryer” combination, an existing one-stop-shop appliance for cleaning clothes. What if we extended this philosophy to other categories of home appliances? Proposal: Sometimes, a frozen food requires a lengthy defrosting period. So if you want to eat that item, you must laboriously: Remove the item from the freezer Place…
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