The Mad Scientists' Corner (Vol. 7). New ideas are fewer and farther in between these days. Ever since about junior year, there’s been this feeling of slow mental regression. Like mental math is a lot harder for me than it used to be, and probability calculations take me a lot longer. Even my vocabulary ain’t what it used to be. I just feel... dumber these days. =/ Ah well, what can I do?

Epoxy Dry Hairspray. Back in my experimental hair days, I was always trying to come up with or replicate weird hairstyles that I'd seen. (I guess I should mention that I watch a lotta anime, and in those, the hair gets crazy.) Anyways, I remember always having a dilemma as to which styling product to use. The weaker stuff wouldn’t hold the shape I wanted; the stronger stuff was usually too sticky to get the shape and movement that I wanted or dried to slowly to stay. So I got to thinking, couldn’t they make like a two-part hair styling product that works like epoxy (or any other thermosetting polymer?). The first part would be like a regular hair gel-like substance. But the difference is, once you’ve got your hair in the shape you want, you spray it down with the second substance. And they chemically react to instantly cure into a hard solid. I dunno, it doesn’t sound that crazy. If they already make this, someone tell me, cuz it would save me a lotta hair grief.

iPod L/R Balance. When I’m listening to my iPod while walking around the streets, I tend to only put one ear bud in. I guess it’s cuz I don’t like being completely cut-off and unaware of my surroundings- that’s like asking to be mugged or something. The problem is, when you have one headphone in and the other dangling, in quieter places, ppl around you can hear what you’re listening to. And this is sometimes an annoyance to others or an embarrassment to self if you’re listening to an awkward song (e.g. Shania Twain’s “Man! I Feel Like a Woman”). Not to mention that a lot of songs that use stereo effects get completely butchered when you’re only getting half the sound. So seriously, couldn’t they make an EQualizer setting (well, two, really- Left and Right) that converts the stereo sound into monaural and routs it to only one earpiece? Seriously, I don’t think it’s all that complicated; hell, get me a good look at the firmware/code and I could probably do it myself. Does Apple take suggestions like this? I haven’t cruised their website in awhile.

Car/Key Alarm. You know how a lot of car keys come with that remote thing with an alarm? Well, I don’t know about you, but I’ve NEVER actually used that thing to scare of baddies (as I think it was meant to); I HAVE however used it on occasion to find my car in a crowded parking lot. Simple, right? You just get within range, press a button on the key (chain), and you find your car. Well, what about when you can’t find your keys? Can’t you turn the situation around and put a button in the car that, when pressed, makes your keys go nuts? Some loud beeping, a flashing light, maybe even vibrate? Cuz seriously, I dunno about y’all, but I think I lose my keys more often than I lose my car.

Pillow Helmet. So I haven’t been sleeping very well recently; I wake up with an aching back or neck a lot of mornings. And I think maybe a lot of it has to do with not being able to find a comfortable position with my pillows- cuz I tend to roll around in my sleep and wake up in a completely different position. And one night, while flopping around, I wrapped a pillow around my face; and to my surprise, it actually was pretty comfortable. So I thought, why can’t you just secure the pillow to your HEAD? Like a pillow helmet, hahaha. That way, any way you turn, you’ve still got a full head’s worth of cushioning. It’d be like one of those Sock’em Boppers... for your head. And you could have add-ons, like a sleep mask, or built in headphones for sleep music and an alarm clock.

Spray Nozzle Disposables. You know how they package a lot of stuff in single-use sized quantities? Like Shout wipes or sun block singles. But what about stuff that you need in like a fine mist? Like Febreze or air freshener. You’d probably need like a special nozzle for that. Well, have you ever opened like a ketchup packet poorly and have it splatter all over the place when you squeeze? Well couldn’t they find some way to harness that? I mean, I’m no splatter scientist, but surely there’s a set of conditions, like fluid viscosity, the velocity of the fluid, and the diameter of the opening, perhaps expressible as some non-dimensionalized number (kinda like Reynolds number? I dunno, I wasn’t that great in fluid mechanics. =P). Maybe it’s as simple as just having a small semi-blocked opening and squeezing really hard, I dunno. Any specialists willing to look into it?

Cold-Weave Clothes. Cuz this summer’s been exceptionally hot, I had been thinking about ways to keep cool. And I thought, if clothes can keep you warm, shouldn’t they be able to keep you cool as well? Ok, so normal clothes, like say, a sweater, work like this: they trap little pockets of air around your body. And so your body dissipates (heat) energy into the trapped air instead of directly to your surroundings. So I guess you could think of the trapped air as like some kinda heat barrier or something. Now admittedly, I didn’t pay a whole lotta attention in heat transfer class =P, but if you can do this with heat, why can’t you do something similar with cold? (Cuz in the true scientific sense, there’s no such thing as “cold,” only the absence of heat… which I think is just silly, cuz, well, a rose by any other name, right?) Anyways, so what if you surround yourself with something that’s notoriously hard to warm up (i.e. something with uber-low thermal conductivity)? Like, say, that ceramic that they make the space shuttle heat shield tiles out of? Couldn’t you spin that ceramic into threads and weave it into clothes? Or hell, Styrofoam clothes might work too. So it’d work like this: you stick this cold-suit in the refrigerator and put it on when you’re ready to go out. That way, your body is constantly dumping energy into warming up the suit, and it keeps doing this cuz, like I already said, it’s notoriously hard to warm up. But wait a minute, then couldn’t you do the exact same thing with normal clothes?? I’ll have to try that: stick a sweater in the freezer, then wear it out in the hot Texas sun. Hah, why do I get the feeling this is a recipe for disaster?

Less Thought-Out Ideas. 1) Sometimes I like sleeping with my head down into a pillow, but that makes it hard to breathe. Other than like one of those massage tables with a face hole, is there any simple solution to this? Maybe a pillow snorkel? Possibly to be combined with aforementioned pillow helmet? 2) You know how sometimes it’s nice having a study buddy so you feel like you have some moral support? Well, how about like a study mannequin? For when no actual human is willing to sit with you. Or maybe a blow-up doll? You could tack on extra features like, pull a string and it’ll play recorded inspirational messages like “hang in there kid,” “don’t worry, you’re not stupid,” “that professor’s a DICK!” 3) I know Dr. Scholl’s makes like billion different pads and inserts for the soles of your feet, but a lot of times, it’s the tops of my feet that hurt. Maybe they could make foot-top cushions too?

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