Modern Inventions
Graphic Source: Clipart.com Things are being discovered or invented every day. Many of these discoveries and inventions go unnoticed by most of us. Other are so irrelevant to our lives that we are not interested, even when we are told about them. Some of the inventions and discoveries are snapped up by the government and we are not allowed to see them, others just get dust on them and are washed over by the sands of time. One invention comes to mind. Well it is not even an invention, it is more like an improvement to an invention and that is the special oil sucking centrifugal pump that was developed by the actor Kevin Costner and his brother. The pump is able to separate oil from water and while the oil industry didn't have anything like it, they just ignored it, as did the government and many other companies when Costner presented it before them. Things are changing and it looks like the pump is gaining interest, especially now while oil is leaking into the Gulf of Mexico. Given enough of these pumps the oil might be able to be contained to a small area. A new discovery has been made that may turn out to be a boon to those with cancer. One of the problems that people are having fighting cancer is that some of the cancers are becoming resistant to the drugs being used. The discovery is a way to fight cancer on the molecular level. Scientists at the university of Massachusetts Amherst and the University of Illinois have discovered a synthetic compound that only targets drug resistant bacteria and kills them but also kills the cancer. When it comes to inventions, you just can't help but notice all that junk that is advertised on television. Every once in a while something handy might come along, but most are just new ways to bend plastic. Having said this I have to tell the truth. I actually bought a couple of those things. Yes I was gullible. One of the items I bought was a small battery powered shaver that was good for a couple of shaves before it began to pull out my whiskers one by one. It would make a great present for some guy you didn't like. Another item I purchased was a trimmer. It was supposed to trim sideburns, beards and mustaches. When I got it, it didn't work. It wasn't worth sending back so I decided to take it apart and guess what? I actually was able to fix it and it works. Then there were the hanger substitutes that you could hang 6 or 8 hangers on that folded up to make more room in the closet. They didn't work for me and kept getting caught on things and some bent from the weight of a coat or something like that, when they weren't supposed to. My wife purchased an upside down tomato plant hanger which she said she needed. It is still in the box 3 years later so I don't know if it works or not. When it comes to new inventions, it is sometimes hard to tell if an invention is actually useful, because it has to meet the laws of physics and many inventions claim to be perpetual motion devices and look convincing, but are not. I remember one that I saw at the Ripley Believe It Or Not museum. It was a wheel where large ball bearings would roll to the end of a wheel once you started it and the wheel would turn. It was called a perpetual motion machine, but in truth would have stopped eventually. There are all sorts of new wheels and blades being designed to capture more energy from water and wind and it seems that we could almost be self sufficient now if we had enough of these devices. Wait to you hear this. Are you tired of washing dishes? There is a new invention that does away with dish washing forever. No it isn't a paper plate. A new type of appliance has been developed at MIT. When you are done with your dishes, you put them into something called the DishMaker and it melts them. The dishes are made from acrylic, which is said to be nontoxic. When you need dishes you go to the device and it creates new dishes from the melted ones. By the way this method also eliminates dish storage. Countries that have a lot of smog and need to do a lot of new construction can get help. That help comes in the form of smog eating cement. Once you build something out of this cement it help clean up the area. The guy that invented Twitter, Jack Dorsey has invented something called the square. The square is a small device that you plug into your mobile phone that will allow you to receive credit card payments. That should make it easy for those that run the thousands of small businesses on the net. One invention that I have to see work is a new camcorder that has two lenses and takes 3D movies. Here is the best part, you don't need glasses to view them. At this time I am not exactly sure how that works. I have to assume that the 3D movie shows on the viewing screen in 3D and not a television, but I could be incorrect. A new type of air conditioning has been developed and it is over 90% more efficient than anything we have in our homes. The technology is called DEVap. No refrigerants are used and this protects our atmosphere. MyCuppa Mugs now come with markings on the inside. These markings show you the proper amount of milk to be put into a cup of coffee or tea. While this is not exactly earth shattering, I guess it could be handy. Yeah sure! New Science Magazine is now predicting that X-Ray vision and invisibility will be used in everyday life in the next 25 years. The magazine says that a form of ultrasound will make the X-Ray vision. The invisibility will come from bending light waves that trick the human eye. So what was the hottest invention of the last century? Was it the atom bomb? Could it have been the Airplane? According to a survey most women say that it was high heels. |
