Ideas 111-120

#111: Cassette Battery

This is a very, involving idea.

Imagine that you have a long strip, made out of square blocks inside individual plastic pouchs. It looks rather like condom packaging, for lack of better object to compare. The blocks are of a magnetic material, but they are not magnetized yet.

Now do you remember those old cassette tapes? This invention is like a large cassette tape, but instead of the magnetic tape, we have the strip of magnets. In the middle of the tape there are two machines, the top one magnetizes a passing block. The bottom one heats it up beyond Curie temperature.

If you roll the reels to one direction, the blocks would become magnets, and the strip would be wound around the reel. It would become progressively hard to wound due to the magnets interaction. This would be storing energy.

If you let the reel loose, it should with some luck rotate the other side. As they are passing the magnets would be destroyed. You would get the energy from the motion of a shaft attached in either one of the reels.

Now, you can either use an ON/OFF switch to the heating element, and wait it to cool, or go even pro with Idea #011 and use a variable heat coefficient material.

#112: Body Heat

The Matrix has taught us that every human is essentially a old-fashion light-bulb. 

How much heat, on average, does the entire human population dissipates per second? 

Is this sufficient to be accountable for global warming?  

#113: Beta Decay

This is as naive as it could possibly be.

If you look at the equation of Beta Decay, in Nuclear Physics, you notice that there are a lot of electrons going out.

Can you force these electrons into a wire somehow, and use them as electrical energy?

#114: Positrons

Because of their charge, are positrons any good as a candidate for antimatter storage systems?

Imagine if you could pair produce, then inject the produced electrons back into the grid and store the positrons for later use. All that in a process that is economical advantageous. Oh, that would be neat. 

#115: Hydrodynamic Currents

What if we created a large-scale version of a copper wire, just for fun? It could be used in science classes.

There would be spheres, with an condutor core and insulant cover. These spheres would be charged, for example by a Van der Graaf generator. 

The spheres would float in water streams, driven by pumps. 

As the spheres flow, does the water or pipes get warmer, such as in an analogous to a electrical resistance?

If you make a coiled pipe, would there be a magnetic field if the stream circulated it?

Now imagine that you place two spheres on an axis, and this axis can rotate freely by its middle point. Place a circular stream around it, with a pump, and put some "electrons". Does the bipole rotate?

#116: Physical Constants

What are physical constants?

If you multiply all physical constants to each other, and multiplies to x, and finally equates this to 1, how much is x? Is x the value of all the constants we don't know yet?

Can you arrange all the physical constants in one equation, using dimensional quantities? Are we still missing constants? Can you tell? Can knowing what is left hint about what this quantity is about?

#117: Primes, the Search

Is the numerical sequence with only one digit, formed by the digits of prime numbers, any less mysterious than the prime number sequence itself? Can it be predicted?

This isn't very clear. Let me try again: 

The primes are  2,3,5,7,11,13,15,...

Your sequence is: 2,3,5,7,1,1,1,3,1,5,...

Is this sequence easier to work with than the primes itself, in terms of predicting primes or deriving a general formula?

#118: PV Maintenance

A drone specialized in cleaning solar pannels.

I suppose that should this created, and regulations don't get in the way, a city could have companies whose drones would go from house to house cleaning the pannels. Sort a bee-like thing.

#119: Filtering Atoms

There are materials, such as Invar, that hardly expand due to temperature variations. 

Produce two really, really smooth slabs of Invar. Place them side by side, with a small gap in between them. Now heat one slowly in a very controlled manner. You should have a really tiny gap now, that you can control.

Can you use such a gap to separate gases, by atomic size?


How so? let me elaborate some more.

If you have a gas with three types of atoms, of diameters A, B and C. The sizes relate to each other so that A > B > C. C has the smalest diameter. 

Make an opening of a size intermediary to B and C. Pass the gas on the aperture. Only C will get through, because A and B are larger than the size of the opening. You've separated C. 

Now make another opening of size intermediary to A and B. Pass the gas that contains A and B together. Now, only B passes. That is it: you've separated the gases A, B and C.  

#120: Sacrificial Anode

Sometimes we use a metal to protect other from corrosion because it is more easily "eaten" away. 

Could we regenerate this metal using electricity, so we don't need to replace the sacrificial anode?

Maybe this is already done.

BANNER IMAGE CREDITS: NASA & ESA 

Want to know more about this image? Follow this external link.