* Good Ideas

 

 - don't forget about that mirror in the student center!, it's two

   mirrors at right angles, like staring at a corner of a room. The

   light reflects so that it shows you what you actually look like,

   instead of your mirror image.

 

 - remote control wasp :: use computer to drive wings with remote

   power/logic.

 

 - public (distributed?) database of email->private-key pairs, to

   enable automatic encryption.

 

 - every equivalent creature will see each others eyes as black -- it's

   universal. Even of the creatures see in radio waves, and their eyes

   are 2m long pieces of jagged metal, when those creatures look at

   each other, they will see black, the absence of light and color

   (since it's being absorbed by the sensor array).

 

 - intelligent microwave :: it learns where the hot nodes of its fields

   are, and uses them to evenly heat any food item. It has an infared

   camera or something to keep track of how hot the food is. That way,

   you don't get bowls where the edges are boiling, while the center is

   still frozen. Requires a little bit of intelligence/vision, since

   the exact pattern of heating totally depends on the exact shape of

   the food.  Wouldn't need a carasouel, and wouldn't need a timer,

   just a desired temperature. Could also detect ice, and automotically

   defrost the parts which are frozen. Might be able to work much

   faster since it can aviod overheating; might have problems with

   heating the insides of thick things, might need a weight sensor too.

   

   Would be much cleaner than other microwaves, since food would

   "sputter" and splash liquid much less. 

 

   Throw in some SIFT+R processing to match previously cooked foods and

   learn the exact heating profiles for things that have been cooked

   before -- it can get faster the more its used.

 

 - brain-aware image compression algorithm

 

 - Credit card proxy - would be a company which works like paypal

   except for real world transactions

 

 - Flesh pillow :: a pillow like the arm or torso of a human, complete

                   with simulated temperature, bones, and heartbeat.

 

 - super screw :: a screw which has only one or two threads and intead

                  uses compresion to fit into a hole (the whole shank

                  of the screw is split into multiple pieces to

                  accomplish this; the tip is a point, then the middle

                  bulges out and gets compressed when screwed in.

 

 - light filter :: (like light tweezers) to mechanically seperate

                   fluids with different index of refraction

 

 - chalk eraser project :: maybe make a directional eraser, for easy

      release of chalk dust, like fur, and how it likes to rest in a

      certain direction.

 

 - silver socks

 

 - UROP: magnet gear/metal teeth tape device to distill urine through

   evaporation and easily dispose of urea crystals for use in desert --

   produce drinkable water.  

 

 - UROP: Make the LED in line with the flow for the microinjector, so

   that it may transmit maximum flow.  Motor that changes distance of

   internal magnet from windings depending on desired speed so as to

   obtain maximum power efficiency.  

 

 - web scraper which monitors various lottries, looking for "special"

   gimmick changes in the rules (like 4x winnings on Wednesdays) and

   computes expected value...  

 

 - Memristiors novel design :: make an evolutionary algorithm to make

   old stuff using all four basic circuit elements.

 

 - Conductive concrete

 

 - little bitty melting pot

 

 - power strip/timer programmable combination

 

 - algorthms which learn what their inputs are and in what order, and

   can adapt to changing circumstances -- they remember previous

   arguments and adapt so as to respond to different connections.

 

 - hear a true pure tone by direct stimultion of the nerves of the ear

   mechanical analogue to the electrical op-amp

 

 - paper folding device :: make it convienent to fold lots of papers in

      various ways.

 

 - concrete epoxy :: epoxy with sand/ some other solid material.

 

 - suspend some ball of material with a high index of refraction and

   shine light into it so it gets stuck -- would the light stay trapped

   forever? Could you build up unlimited quantities of light inside the

   sphere (which could then be released slowly by frustrated internal

   reflection?

 

 - movie screening :: Movies always are too long at first. one way to

      shorten them ``scientifically" is to record blink rate during the

      move and then remove / shorten the frames of the parts in which

      there are a lot of blinking (average this over multiple people)

      better yet, put it online and do it across thousands of people. I

      got this from youtube in which there is an episode of kill bill

      whih is composed entirely of the parts in whihc opeople had their

      eyes closed. slogan: want to make a movie people can't take their

      eyes off of? Just take those parts out!

 

 - capture reading of a scientific atricle via screen capture while

   people read it, then use it to make the article better. like the

   movie-pruning idea.

 

 - super reading program that teaches people the ideal mental mask to

   apply during reading so as to read very fast. 

 

 - explosive thermite epoxy putty (one part would contain the rust, one

   part the alumimum)

 

 - use the above screen capture routine to make a quiz program tha

   constructs questions about the content you seemed to gloss over

   while reading. could be easy if the pdf came with embedded

   questions.  Dylan: automatically generate word-cloud about the parts

   you found most interesting; help others who read the same stuff by

   drawing attention to the interesting parts.

 

 - make a samurai sword, but use osmiridum instead of martensite for

   the cutting part; it should be a better sword.

 

 - use the induction technology used to recharge electric toothbrushes

   with no metal links to send data -- without any metal at all!

 

 - reading is a form of synsethesia

 

 - A machine which translates the text eg, "ACTGAC" into actual DNA

 

 - ferro-fluid magnetic field suspended micro generator to make

   electricity

 

 - alcohol/fluid flow powered battery

 

 - folding razor blade sword

 

 - learn perfect pitch using another sense in combination (sight or

   touch)

 

 - kaleidoscope projector

 

 - razor blade de-sharpener (for guilt free disposal)

 

 - bricks filled with luminescent plant material

 

 - metal grids with seeds inside, which grow together and form a

   durable biological matrix. The metal substrate delivers

   water. (maybe use plastic instead of metal?)  Dylan: enrich plants

   with inorganic compounds; electrical interfaces in cellular plant

   matter => remote-controlled photosynthetic/bioluminescent

   structures.

 

 - conducting extracellular matrix

 

 - cross-modal memory hashing

 

 - flossing thimble-gaurds

 

 - integrate lattice learning with rules by generating hypothetical

   examples

 

 - wooden refridgerator to give food a better taste Dylan: like barrels

   for wine, or planks for salmon. Maybe just have "flavor planks" for

   your pre-existing fridge. Need to mitigate effect of temperature on

   volatility?

 

 - radioactive transmutation molecule by molecule :: create precious

      metals or something else economically advantageous.

 

 - innolculate food with tons of harmless bacteria so that there's no

   room for bad bacteria as a method of preservation

 

 - pasteur - style holding jar with siphon as a way to store liquids ar

   room temperature indefinately w/o refridgeration.(7/26/2009)

 

 - Throw rude people out of resturant as a matter of course -- make

   ambiance much better.

 

 - make something that mixes soap with firehydrant water (and reduces

   the pressure a bit) and use it to clean windows of buildings.

 

 - make an ocarina out of pure silver

 

 - fire pen :: pen which burns words on to the page, thus never needing

               any ink. Is ther a way to make it runnable from the

               human's energy?

 

 - website to design your own soda, and label, and have it mailed to

   you / sell it from your own online store.

 

 - solar panels that float on the ocean

 - handcuffs with more than two cuffs (3?) :: great for daisy chaining

      prisoniers, binding them to environment, etc.

 

 - vector based SOUND files :: like the pictures but with SOUND. codify

      sound in a language with enough symbols so that it can describe

      everything and encode it in that. would be like going from speech

      to text or smtg. This would store sound as an image of the

      wavefront encoded as a vector image.

 

 - Mouse with a horizontal scroll wheel in addition to the vertical

   scroll wheel

 

 - logic maintance system for big institutions to make sure the things

   they are thinking about doing are not retarded

 

 - http://www.regulations.gov/

 

 - genetically engineered glowing fruit -- sell seeds?

 

 - memory slide :: IF memories are encoded using particular sensory

                   impressions, what happens if the sensory organ

                   itself changes? those memories would become

                   unaccessable. maybe this is why we can't remember

                   much from our childhoods. also, could this happen

                   throught life as well? Could S remember stuff from

                   his childhood?

 

 - make a completely indestructable phone :: no moving parts or display

      you should be able to slam it around all you want, and it will

      just work. brutally simple. aerogel around the battery, minimal

      interface - never gets too hot, and can be dropped into water. no

      holes -- uses field effects for everything from the buttons to

      inductive charging and data transfer.

 

 - midi to ocarina "tabs" program (online website? buy ocarinas from it

   too)

 

 - 3d printing with sound pulses (or just patterns) -- like the 8.03

   lecture

 

 - lighter flint on spring :: make hot and it makes sparkles!

 

 - Use a nondeterministic sentence parser to understand sentences with

   multiple meanings. Perhaps use statistical language as a filter

   against unintended (or rather, uninteresting) interpretations.

 

 - Rebranding New+Clear Energy with informational campaign and

   public debate forum to enforce its transparent and open

   nature. France needn't be the world leader in nuclear

   energy. (Dylan) 

 

 - Engineer a material which has both ductility and high surface

   tension to make the "third" minimal-surface-energy solution to a

   bubble suspended between two equal-diameter rings. (Solutions are

   cylindrical catenary curve, two separated half-bubbles, and a

   double-cone)

 

 - Textbook whose content can be varied continuously :: alter level of

      difficulty, rigor, diction, emphasize crossover with certain

      other discipline, etc. Content generated dynamically from

      knowledge base, along with questions that are moreover altered to

      guide knowledge acquisition. Motivation: One book of

      knowledge. /One./