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Class project: Something that needs to be invented

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Idea #1...

You can replace the ink cartridges in printers.
You can replace the toner in copy machines.
You can replace the ink in ball point pens.
You can replace the graphite in mechanical pencils.
But you can't replace the fluid in magic markers.

Design a magic marker that allows the user to replace the fluid instead of having to throw it away when the ink runs dry and buy a new one.

I was just at the store about a week ago and I was surprised to see refillable highlighters. Just thought you might like to know. :D
 
Another possibility...

Ever play hoops by yourself and you end up chasing your missed shots all over Hell's Half Acre?

Design some sort of contraption that attaches to any backboard that "catches" or prevents missed shots from going all over the place. Maybe it funnels them back to you as well. Several design issues I see that you will have to overcome. Might make for an interesting project.
 
Another possibility...

Ever play hoops by yourself and you end up chasing your missed shots all over Hell's Half Acre?

Design some sort of contraption that attaches to any backboard that "catches" or prevents missed shots from going all over the place. Maybe it funnels them back to you as well. Several design issues I see that you will have to overcome. Might make for an interesting project.


Something like this but with less equipment....
http://www.boomerangbasketball.net/


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Another possibility...

Ever play hoops by yourself and you end up chasing your missed shots all over Hell's Half Acre?

Design some sort of contraption that attaches to any backboard that "catches" or prevents missed shots from going all over the place. Maybe it funnels them back to you as well. Several design issues I see that you will have to overcome. Might make for an interesting project.

http://images.hayneedle.com/mgen/master:GARD003.jpg
 
Two sided bathroom paper.

One side is toilet paper, the other baby wipe and it's flushable.

Boom. Gold.

Thank me later.

While on the subject of TP, can I get some with my ex-wife's picture on it??
 
How about a wind energy mill powered by a Solar Tracking System. The tracking system will follow the suns pattern. The excess power generated through the solar panels can be sent back out towards the grid, which would generate income.
I
f you can do that, then I can make you a lotta money

This is a good idea if it wasn't so large, since I actually have to build whatever I decide to design. Perhaps I could think of a way to make a small model of it.

Two sided bathroom paper.

One side is toilet paper, the other baby wipe and it's flushable.

Boom. Gold.

Thank me later.

Hmm... not sure how to do that exactly. Are baby wipes not flushable?

Quick clarification... does the product have to be marketable or can it be any kind of goofy contraption?

It needs to be somewhat marketable. There's not any plan to market it, but I suppose if the idea was great and we did a great job designing it, it could possibly be marketed. But yeah, it has to be something that people might actually buy.

Another possibility...

Ever play hoops by yourself and you end up chasing your missed shots all over Hell's Half Acre?

Design some sort of contraption that attaches to any backboard that "catches" or prevents missed shots from going all over the place. Maybe it funnels them back to you as well. Several design issues I see that you will have to overcome. Might make for an interesting project.

Perhaps something sports related would work. There are things like that that will rebound for you and pass to you. I'm thinking there are other possibilities like this, however. Something simpler like that baseball contraption that you wrap around a pole and it "pitches" to you.

Thanks for the ideas. I'm about to go to office hours to see what groups have made in past years to see if that generates any ideas.
 
I was just at the store about a week ago and I was surprised to see refillable highlighters. Just thought you might like to know. :D

Hmm, well I could pretend not to know such things existed, though we'll probably have to do a patent search to prove it's an original idea.
 
I'm on mobile so I can't search but there are quite a few things like Cratylus described. Some are very advanced and get the ball back to you and some are basic and just funnel the ball out. My favorite was ours in high school. It had high nets to catch anything and would shoot the ball back to you either in a stationary position or rotating around the perimeter 180 degrees. Man, I used to get 250 to 500 shots up after practice with that thing.

Anyway, I'll try to add something more useful when I get in. I can't wait til imadogg gets a hold of this thing :chuckles:
 
New packaging for chocolate, especially Reeses Cups, that prevents them from melting in hot weather.
 
The basketball thing has been done. There is a rebound returner that attaches to the hoop and if you make it, it comes straight back to you. There is one with a net underneath the hoop that kinda rolls it back to you, then there is the gun, for people shooting volume shots.
 
Three ideas...

There is already a patent for side view mirror wipers... but I don't think they've ever seen mass production... there are heated side view mirrors... but when it is misty out or rainy, it can be tough to see out the side mirrors...

so route little air nozzles into the top part of the mirrors which blow air down the mirrors and clear off the condensation. Designing and powering a small compressor shouldn't be a big deal. And/Or you could high-tech things up a bit by coating the mirror surface with something that repels water.

2nd idea is home related... you are probably not a home owner, but an annoyance is having to clean out the gutters on your home. Sure, you can install gutter guards to keep leaves and debris out in the first place, but what often happens in the winter is the small holes in the gutter guard freeze over which prevents the melting snow on your roof from entering into the gutter... and you get ice dams.

My thought was use existing sources of heat to keep the gutter guards from freezing like the excess heat from the clothes dryer vent which is vented out to the open air anyway, or exhaust fans from bathrooms and the kitchen - all sources of wasted heat. Or high-tech it with a small solar or wind powered unit that heats a coil that is either impregnated into the gutter guard which would warm it up enough to prevent freeze over, or it heats a coil that is lain across the top of the gutter guard in the fall, then can be removed in the spring.

A third invention would a device to assist with removing your eyeglasses. It could be a curved piece that attatches to the bridge of the glasses, and have a pad on the other end that rests on your nose to prevent your glasses from slipping down. Call it opti-grab or something. Betcha you'd sell MILLIONS!
 
Thanks again for the ideas. Apparently my professor decided to skip office hours today. I waited for 15 minutes and he never showed up.

I came up with an idea of a golf club washer that was portable, but I'm not sure how easy it would be to make in the time we have allotted since it would probably not be able to be made out of existing things.
 
New packaging for chocolate, especially Reeses Cups, that prevents them from melting in hot weather.

This is a great idea. I'm not sure if it would count for the class though, since it's not really a mechanical device. It seems like some chemical ought to be able to work here. Like when the heat reaches the melting point of chocolate, something is released in the wrapper that turns cold. Surely there is some chemical that would do the trick?
 
Three ideas...


A third invention would a device to assist with removing your eyeglasses. It could be a curved piece that attatches to the bridge of the glasses, and have a pad on the other end that rests on your nose to prevent your glasses from slipping down. Call it opti-grab or something. Betcha you'd sell MILLIONS!

One of the funniest movies of all time. Two old comedies are must sees, The Jerk and Blazing Saddles.
 
Idea #2...

This is something I've wanted for a LONG time.

Design an MP3 player that has a USB port so that you can load songs onto it from a flash drive.

That's actually EASY as shit to do. I'm amazed there isn't a product on the market able to do this already. It'd be VERY easy to come up with a design, even with off the shelf products.

Idea #3... (a little tougher)

A microwave oven will heat food and drinks that are at room temperature in 60 seconds.
But if you want to cool food or drinks that are at room temperature... that takes a couple of hours.

Design a device that will cool food and drinks QUICKLY.

This however, would be next to impossible, AFAIK. Imagine freezing a bowl of chili. Even if there were some immersion device which would bring the surface of the food and container to below zero quickly; there would be a considerable amount of time before the inside of the food were actually frozen through. Beyond that, doing it without some form of liquid coolant that would be dangerous to store and would obviously boil away quickly on contact with the food, would be very difficult to do.

Perhaps a condenser that would cool air and store it - but that's dangerous. Just seems impractical for home use with current cooling technologies.

Btw. This thread is ironic because I was in the process of designing a USB transfer cable that would allow non-driver aware appliances to interact with a virtual usb memory stick. The stick would instead be a cable that served content from a server on the other end. USB transfer cables exist already but require drivers on both ends of the cable; in this instance, only the server would need special software - while the client could be as simple as a PS3, a printer, or even a Plasma screen for HD picture viewing.
 

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