Ideas 81-90
#81: Anti Anti Ad-block
A plugin that will mark on search results a website that employs ad-block detection, so you don't enter that foul place.
This is commonly used in publishers.
#82: Trapping Light
Is it possible to trap light?
You make two metallic semi-spheres, and polish their inner surfaces to near-perfection. Then you drill a single hole into one of them, and join them together. What happens when light is shone at the apperture? Can you make light, somehow, enter, but do not exit, with some sort of one-way mirror?
A variant of this is not to drill a hole, but put a light source inside the sphere. There would be two choices here, if the light source had a power source, or not. in this case you would need to get wiring out.
Another variant is to take a straight fiber optics and somehow, make a closed loop with it. This should be very difficult considering how hard it is to make fiber optics connections.
There are two motivations for this idea: store energy and explore unique phenomena.
Honestly I have not followed much of the canon work in this subject. I call canon what is done the traditional halls of science instead of in my crazy lab. A quick search reveals that many scientists work on this very problem. I've read some time ago, briefly, that there are experiments where people shone high-power lasers into golden devices called hohlraums, and that allowed then to observe energy-to-matter conversions. It is mind-blowing. Still need to do much study to understand that. I'm really curious to know what happens when the light density increases over a volume.
#83: Biowall
This idea has two important aspects: one economical, one practical.
The thing is we use bushes that take shape of a wall, for decorative purposes, or for fencing. There is something very interesting going on here. If you think about it, were are using a plant as a building.
The economical aspect is that, is it cheaper to build a wall, or let it grow for you? When does trimming a bush wall gets even with the costs of building one with bricks and mortar? Brick walls need maintenance too!
In the practical sense, can we modify a bush, or select better species, so that the wall is finished quicker? Is it better a plant that builds quicker, or one that has to be trimmed less often?
#84: Remote Driving
We are quickly moving into a future where there will be self-driving vehicles. Soon. Just a little more. Any time now. Annnd.....No wait just some more. Lol.
This idea is a little intermediary to that. Imagine a central station full of computers. Operators are sitting in those computers, and there are steering wheels in front of them, like videogames. They are driving a number of vehicles, remotely, from this Central.
It could be for example, for Uber drivers or taxis.
It would be required reliable means of communication and sensors on each car for this to be possible.
What advantages would this yield?
Well, one could jump to another car, on the other side of the city, in the blink of an eye. The driivers would work in air-conditioner, and could switch places easily. There could be canteen and resting places in the office. From a company's standpoint, they could be more easily coordinated and monitored too, I suppose.
#85: Iron Wool
This is an experiment, medium-difficult.
You'll need a Van der Graaff generator for this one.
Get a syringe, you don't need the needle. Separate two equal pieces of iron wool. Place one of them inside the syringe and press it. Was it hard to press, how far did you manage to go? Mark that place with a permanent marker. Remove the wool from the syringe.
Now take the other piece of wool. With an insulant tool, charge it in the Van der Graaff Generator. Place it inside the syringe, being careful not to touch it except with the insulant tool. Press the syringe. Did you get to the same place as before?
My intuition tells me that this time the charge repulsion would make it difficult for you to press the syringe.
Should this work, you might consider that a charged wool inside a piston, now charged in a variable and controlled form, could make a spring with variable spring constant K. This is Idea #007.
[With a spring like that you could design a mechanical dampener that was variable. Naturally, it need to go more pro than here.]
#86: Moving Sculpture
It is possible that this is not new. It is a wild idea, artistical.
There are two variants to this idea. It is about making a tridimensional object that would move or rather change shape.
First you get a frame, real 3D cubical frame, made of many beams, and you glue electrical resistors to many points there. The frame is built of a metal alloy that expands a lot when heated.
Then you add to these resistors a circuit that will enable them to be turned on independently. I suppose that would mean lots of switches.
Then you wrap the whole thing in a rubber balloon, real tight. The wires come off the bottom, and you plug them to your microcontroller and power source.
With some luck, as you heat the resistors the beams will expand and the object will take shape. It may be slower than you expect.
What will determine the shape is the heat pattern formed inside the object.
A second variant considered was a powder of sorts that also expands well with heat. It would replace the frame.
#87: Elegant Chair
You can stack plastic chairs on top of each other, and fold metal chairs, what is really nice to save space. But face it, neither chair looks good on that prententious dinner you arranged to impress your boss, right?
This is a chair in which each item of the set is slighly smaller than the rest. The chair seats are smaller in length, lateral width and height.of seat. The overall heigth of the chairs are all the same, so it doesn't look weird.
The seat of a smaller chair fits under the set of a larger chair.
How many chairs can you make like this, before the chair gets too narrow for comfort?
#88: Metrics on Text
How much information can you get from a text, without reading it, just classifying its words?
The idea is to compare a text, any text, with a table where words were sorted by a quality.
Quality can mean many things, They can mean for example if the words are associated with a sentiment (heaven brings good feelings, prison bad ones). It can screen if there are innapropriated words (curses, foul language). Can reflect the erudiction of the author (are there fancy words). Quality can indicate archaism (anyone reading a 18th century novel knows what this is about). Finally, the presence of technical terms from scientific vernacular can indicate technicallity.
Anyway, the purpose off all this is to have that info displayed on the back of a book, so you know what to expect before you actually get to read it. Perhaps you are not in the mood that night for old stuff, or you frown on foul words.
Well, just a thought.
#89: Tellurium-128
Mankind is here, what a achievement!
What will be of us in a thousand years? five thousand? a billion years into the future?
This idea proposes that we build a memorial to celebrate our journey. It would be to manufacture an object of Tellurium-128, an isotope so stable, but so stable, that its half-life is about a trillion times the current age of the universe.
What information should this object convey? Our genetic makeup, voyager's golden disk like messages? Well that would take a lot of thinking.
#90: Shields, the Quest
This is an attempt to make Star Trek shields!
The idea is a swarm of flying robots, small in size. They keep roaming a doorstep, like a cloud. On the command of a buttom, they organize themselves perfectly covering the passage.
Well, it is not as nice as in the shows, but heh.
BANNER IMAGE CREDITS: NASA, ESA, Harald Ebeling (University of Hawaii at Manoa) & Jean-Paul Kneib (LAM)
Want to know more about this image? Follow this external link.