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Inventions, Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Improving existing technology Dirt bikes, coconuts, & hammers. What do they have in common? Not a lot. But they are great examples of simple innovations. We showcase stories of young people who are improving old ideas...and making lots of money doing it! Mobile this, mobile that.. our mobile phones are becoming more and more advanced. In the not too distant future, your phone may be able to provide you with the ultimate shopping experience. If that's not your kind of thing, how about a phone that can slap people? Did you know that around the world, every year, 3 trillion banana trees are chopped down and left as waste. Now there are a group of people in Australia who are using these trees to make a better sort of paper, banana paper. Technological devices are getting smaller and smaller (and cheaper!). You are being watched, but can you spot the camera? Not likely, it's only the size of a 10¢ piece and cordless. Big brother (or sister) really is watching, and in more and more ways too. Did you know that you could be tracked with your mobile phone? Or that there are RFID tags that can record information about your shopping habits? Speaking of kids, here's a simple device that stops babies throwing up so much. Using water and detergents to wash our dishes can have negative effects on the environment. Check out Lawrence's solution to too many bubbles, or the water-free and detergent-free dishwasher that has been developed by some University of New South Wales students. There is also the option of the Swash dishwasher, designed by Alex Gilmour, which reduces pollution and excess water use by using steam (which even gets recycled after every use). Even studying something really simple can be useful. Two young French physicists figured out how spaghetti breaks. Their research will help us construct more stable buildings. Proving who you are could involve many new technologies in the study of Biometrics Ever wanted something really cool, but couldn't get it because it wouldn't fit in your house. Jeremy Burns had this problem when he wanted a pool table so he's created a rotating hexagonal pool table called Hexy. There are lots of different ways of solving problems, some research into huge global problems is really high-tech but some ideas are so simple and they seem to be just as effective like the LifeStraw. There's even a new water purifier, called the Mvura, which works using the cleaning power of the sun. Change your clothes without changing your clothes. Confused? Researchers are making it possible with Chameleon clothing. A company in Melbourne is changing the way we look at glow-in-the-dark products. Visionglow has designed a new technology which allows glow-in-the-dark stuff to glow for way longer than anything out there at the moment. They've even gone one step further and created a range of products, including safety gear and my favourite a glow in the dark toilet seat! A young Australan's invention could save lives by earthquake proofing mud brick houses. Sick of misplacing things? James got sick of misplacing his glasses, so he decided to permanently attach them to his head. Can you grow gold on trees? Researchers from the University of Sydney are working on a way to mine that won't harm the environment. Educational toys are a huge market at the moment and Industrial Design student Emma Paterson has been designing toys to teach children patience - inspired by the echidna. What about improving something you are really passionate about, like the drums? A girl named Ali has done just that. For most people spaghetti is just another meal, but at the University of South Australia engineering students have taken to building spaghetti bridges. Background Notes A brief synopsis of each of the invention and innovation items in our shows and links to our references.
Have you ever wanted something that just wouldn’t fit in your room or house? Well that didn’t stop young Australian inventor Jeremy Burns when he decided he wanted a pool table. He didn’t have room for a regular pool table so he made one that would fit. The pool table he invented is not only hexagonal but it also rotates so that you don’t need enough space around every side of the table for people to play their shots, they can just spin the table top around. The table uses a system of bearings so that you can spin the table top around without moving the balls. Jeremy made the table at school as the major work for a design and technology subject and it was featured on ABC TV’s The New Inventors.
Return to top. Jake Tyson is a young Australian who has re-invented the hammer. Big deal, you may think, a heavy thing you bash nails with. However Jake’s design really does change the way the hammer works.
References
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Got the Blues for a Shopping Spree? Broadway, in central Sydney, was relaunched as the first bluetooth enabled Shopping Centre late last year. The bluepulse system enables people within the shopping centre to use their mobile phones to get useful information they want about their surroundings. Compatible 'bluetooth' enabled mobile phones, can access specific mobile content as soon as the owner enters the Broadway Centre. This is sure to ignite a lot of interest in the way we use new wireless technologies such as bluetooth and WAP in public information networks. Hoyts will be providing streaming video previews of movies being shown in the centre's cinema and there's plenty of opportunity for movie theatres to use this type of technology to sell vacant seats too. Also British Airways and Qantas are developing this mobile point of sale system. It is possible in the future to pay for a ticket via your phone and receive the ticket, perhaps in the form of a bar code to your mobile device. Hmmmm.....next holiday destination? Reference
Return to top. Melbourne innovator Deborah Kalisse has very cleverly used gravity on her side to stop her young son's reflux problem. The innovation called the 'Baby Elevator' is like a normal baby change mate, but on a bit of an angle. This solves the problem by making the oesophagus and mouth above the infants' stomach, so that it is harder for the stuff in their guts to come out their mouth. A very simple idea, that will no doubt be solving many peoples problems. Isn't it funny that no one else has though of such a simple idea like this until now! Reference
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Paper has been made from fibrous materials like papyrus reid's for millennia. The technique is called laminating, where you get two layers of very thin fibrous material and lay them on top of each other at 90° , then use some kind of glue to stick them together. The core of a banana tree is very fibrous and perfect to use for making laminated paper. There is also a lot of sap in a banana tree core, more than enough to stick the layers of fibre together. This paper is 300 times stronger than normal paper, it produces no waste from the production (unlike normal paper that uses a lot of water and chemicals), in fact it uses a renewable waste product to make (the trees), it is water and fire resistant, and it is completely biodegradable. Reference
Return to top. Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) tags contain wireless microchips that can be used to store (and collect) information. The tags vary in size from a speck of dust up to a credit card, and they could be the future of inventory tracking. There are a few different kinds of RFID tags - they can be read only or read/write; and they can be active (need their own battery) or passive (no battery). A receiver is needed in order to read the information on the RFID tags, and this is usually hooked up to a computer system to sort out the data. Passive RFID tags don't emit any radio signal of their own, but use the energy from the receiver's signal to send the response. RFID tags can be incorporated into almost anything, from the packaging of food and grocery items to clothing and keyrings, and they can be used like barcodes to keep a track of particular items. However, unlike barcodes, there's no need to scan individual things - in fact, with an RFID receiver you can do a whole box or trolley load of stuff in one hit. This kind of technology could be really helpful for supermarkets - if everything had a RFID tags and there were receivers built into the shelves, the store managers would know exactly what they have in their store at any time (for real time stocktaking and as a shoplifting deterrent). They could even have a system set up so that when stock of an item runs low, the computer automatically reorders it. The designer label, Prada have RFID tags in all their clothes, shoes and bags. This means that sales assistants can know exactly what sizes and colours are available in the store, without having to check out the back. It also means that when you take something into the dressing room, information about the item appears on a touch screen, so that you can choose different sizes or colours, pick out some accessories, or see what it looks like on the catwalk, all without leaving the dressing room. Prada have also put RFID tags into their customer cards. If you had one, as soon as you walk into the shop, the shop assistants would know who you are, what you've bought from Prada (including what sizes) and when you bought it. This technology obviously raises some privacy issues. Who else could get the information from the RFID tags? Who will be monitoring your consumer habits? Will we eventually see tailor-made ads, where billboards talk to you by name, encouraging you to buy more stuff? References
Return to top. Mobile Phones & Pervasive Gaming A new game or an invasion of privacy? Pervasive gaming is a game that is all around you, all of the time, and the international company, It's Alive has launched two of these games: Supafly - a virtual soap-opera, and BotFighters - an action game. These games are location-based mobile phone games. In order to play, you first need to go to the company's website and create a character, a person for Supafly or a robot for BotFighters. Your character then 'lives' in your phone 24 hours a day, and, using SMS messages, they can interact with other characters in the game. The aim of Supafly is to become famous - you need to get your character's face on the cover of Supafly's virtual magazine, and you do this by interacting with other characters in the game. Whenever you're physically close to another character (that is, another person who's playing Supafly and has a character living in their phone), you'll get an SMS message. You can then interact with their character via text messages - you can talk, argue, or even make out.
How does it work? It's Alive can tell where people in the games are using mobile positioning. Whenever your mobile phone is on, it's communicating with mobile phone towers. There are mobile phone towers all over the country, and usually your phone will be connected to the closest one. Have a look at your phone, has it got your whereabouts right? If not, it's probably connected to a nearby mobile phone tower. In fact, your phone is actually connected to all the mobile phone towers around it. This is to make sure you always have good reception (and don't miss an important call), but it can also be used to find you. This technique is called triangulation. Triangulation usually uses two points, a bearing and a distance to find something, but with the phones it's a little bit different. Mobile phone companies can use the time it takes a signal to reach your phone to figure out distance. If they use the signal from just one mobile phone tower, they know you're a certain distance from that tower. If they also use the signal from another one of mobile phone towers your phone is communicating with, your position can be easily calculated. As an aside, who do you think should have access to this kind of information? Parents? Teachers? Girlfriends and boyfriends?
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Return to top. Bubbles and suds everywhere, sounds like fun…until you have to clean them up. Molly Polly taps are here to save wastage and to prevent mess. Designed by Lawrence, they attach to large buckets of soap to achieve safe and accurate measurements. Reference
Return to top. Imagine being able to clean you dishes without using any water or detergent. A device from three University of NSW industrial design students called the Rockpool could do just that. The Rockpool dishwasher would not only be great for the environment but would also mean that you don’t have do wait for a full load before doing the dishes. This is because the Rockpool runs on pressurised carbon dioxide. The inventors of the Rockpool dishwasher have also recently won a worldwide design competition in New York. Reference
Return to top. Water restrictions across much of Australia as well as problems with pollution inspired Alex Gilmour a student, at the University of Technology in Sydney in 2006, to create a new type of dishwasher that doesn’t use chemicals (like detergent) and is able to recycle water.
Return to top. Everyone has a signature, a set of keys, a birth certificate and probably heaps of passwords, all to provide security to us and our personal information. However it seems that no matter what we do, thieves are at work and are over coming these barriers. So international research is now being conducted on new ways that we can protect our stuff and our identity. Some of the new techniques which we may use to unlock our house, or to prove who we are, might involve our fingers, walk, eyes and even our RNA sequence. The area of science which involves all this research is known as Biometrics. Biometrics uses our personal characteristics and traits to identify us. The different range of technology and methods converts our body bits into patterns, lengths, ratios or sequences and creates unique numbers for us all. Researchers hope that this will put an end to identify theft or fraud, or if anything make our lives easier as we won’t need passwords or keys, as our body parts will unlock things for us. References Return to top. Spaghetti sure is delicious, but is it scientific? Two French physicists have studied uncooked spaghetti sticks in great detail to solve a puzzle that has long troubled the brightest scientists: why does a spaghetti stick almost always snap into more than two pieces? Sébastien Neukirch and Basile Audoly filmed the process and have worked it out. It is caused by waves of vibrations travelling through the spaghetti stick. Their research could prove to be very useful in architecture and construction since reinforcements such as fibreglass and metal rods act in the same way as spaghetti sticks. Spaghetti science could result in more stable buildings in the future. References
Return to top. The Lifestraw is an invention that some are saying could be the best invention ever. Whether you think that or not, it is still a great idea and a really simple one too. The Lifestraw is basically a straw with a filter in it; this means that people who may not have the best quality drinking water will be able to drink the water through their personal Lifestraw. The filter in the Lifestraw will then filter out dirt, sediments, bacteria clusters and kill bacteria, viruses and parasites that may be found in the water too. References Return to top. Without water not a single living organism could survive. Many of us take it for granted. Turn the tap on and out it comes, clean and fresh. But not everyone is so fortunate. Accessing clean and healthy water is a problem for 1.1 billion people around the world, resulting in 2.2 million deaths each year. Maybe we should be more appreciative of our clean water here in Australia. References
Return to top. So you’ve got the busiest day ever, you have to go to school, then quickly rush to work, then go to a friends house for a party. There’s no time for you to go home to get changed from your school uniform into your work uniform and then into your party clothes. Your backpack is full of things already, what do you do? Well, most people would carry everything around with them everywhere they go, which is a big hassle if you’ve ever tried it. References
Return to top. Ever been busting to go to the toilet once you’ve gone to bed? You hold on until you can’t hold on any longer, running to the bathroom you struggle to find the light switch, but shock horror….. The bulb is blown. As you struggle to find the toilet in the dark, cracking your legs into stuff along the way, you might wish that you could see-in-the dark. References
Return to top. After seeing the destruction caused by an earthquake in El Salvador, a young Australian called Dominic Dowling decided to do something to help. References Return to top. Have you ever had a really good idea, but when you thought about it in more detail, it sounded too silly to work? Well, maybe it’s not. James came up with a new pair of glasses without arms. To hold it in place, you need to pierce the bridge of the glasses in between your eyes just above your nose. Sounds a bit strange and over the top? Maybe it is, maybe it’s not, but he came up with the idea and tried it out. The piercing is like any other piercing, the only difference is that the piercing is between the eyes, and you can attach and detach lenses to it. The idea came because James couldn’t wear contact lenses, and found normal glasses inconvenient. So there you go, think outside the ordinary, and try it out. References
Return to top. Have you ever asked you’re parents for something only to hear them say “money doesn’t grow on trees you know?” Well now you can tell them it does! Ok, maybe not money, but perhaps a bit of gold thanks to a young researcher at the University of Sydney. Dr Andrew Harris and his team at the University of Sydney have discovered it’s possible to enhance a plant’s natural ability to take up precious metals, such as silver and gold. Andrew has developed a new technique that makes plants take up an amount of precious metals that weighs the same as about 5 per cent of the plants own dry weight. This means that researchers could one day just harvest the plants and get a small amount of gold out of them, rather than using current mining techniques. What’s going on? Who’s doing it? When Andrew is not in the lab or lecturing at the University of Sydney he is down at the beach in Sydney where he lives. Andrew won one of the Science and Innovation Awards for Young People in Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry for 2006 which awarded him a grand total of $10,000! How do I get into it? Reference Return to top. Puggle promotes patience in pre-schoolers What’s going on? Who’s doing it? How do I get into it? You could also check out the Australian Student Design Awards Or maybe you have a great idea and don’t want to wait until you finish school to realise it, check out the Questacon Smart Moves Invention Convention Reference Return to top. Mechanical Engineer - AliWhat’s going on? Ali graduated from a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering at The Australian National University a couple of months ago. She got really good marks from her final year project where she designed a drum pedal. Ali is into rock music she likes bands like Guns n Roses and Tool, and although she doesn’t play the drums herself, she has a lot of friends that are drummers, and she noticed that the current drum pedal design can be a bit limiting. The foot can only move at a certain speed, which limits the speed of the beat. In some situations where a faster beat is required, a drummer may use 2 pedals – one for each foot. But there is a cymbal (the high hat), that is also controlled by a foot pedal. So if a drummer is using both feet to control the bass drum, it means the high hat can’t be used at the same time. Ali overcame this problem by designing a drum pedal that can be used in double speed, by utilising both the toe and the heel. It’s an improvement and modification of a design and means that the music Ali likes could potentially be even faster. Who’s doing it? Ali is 23 and from Canberra. When she was at school she really liked Art and Drama, but also took physics and maths in year 11 and 12. She realised that doing something like mechanical engineering could combine her skills in physics with the creativity that showed itself in her arts subjects. For her final project she was able to work on something that really interested her, and now she is working as a graduate mechanical engineer designing machines that date fossils How do I get into it? If you are thinking about a future in engineering, studying subjects like maths and physics is a really great start and engineering courses are offered at universities all around Australia. Check out what The University of South Australia has to offer. Spaghetti Bridge Good Enough To EatWhat’s going on? Who’s doing it? How do I get into it? Reference Check out more information in UniSA news -
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