Ideas 51-60

#51: Liquid-Interface Chemistry

Imagine large pools of a solution, in a desert, nonetheless. 

On the surface of the solution there is a thin layer of what seems to be circuitry. If you look closely, you would see thousand of of small interconnected islands over the liquid. Some of this islands you recognize as solar cells. The others absorb the liquid and transform it somehow, either into a different liquid or into a powder that sediments at the bottom.

It also occurred to me that the circuit layer could be between a biphasic solution, non-miscible.

Well this wild idea occurred to me.  

#52: Pro-bono

Gather some coding friends and develop free website templates for

The first three are meant for tourism, to be a place where the person can write about the place where they live. It is not meant as a fully funcional government website, because it wouldn't be possible to predict their needs.  

It be difficult to believe, but that are many small business here in Brazil that can't afford to have a website. They fall in that limbo where the free tools are too basic and the paid tools too costly. 

I suspect this is a reality for all the underdeveloped World.

Well, this is a way to contribute, and also get some practice done.



#53: Gluable Particles

Particles that are inert, non-gluable, but upon some stimulus adhere themselves strongly to each other.

If the adhesion is permanent, it is a glue.

If the adhesion only lasts while the stimulus is applied, is another thing that should also be useful. Lol, I really don't know where these ideas come from.

#54: Underwater Cities

As the coastal cities grows, the price per square meter increases as well. Will we reach a number where it becomes profitable to build mirror cities, underwater?

Now there are all sorts of problems here. Salted water is vicious to structures. Building anything behind meters of water collumn is a pain. 

But who knows, maybe that is a whole new world of challenges for engineers to solve.

#55: Disintegrating Bot

You have  a container with a solution. This solution is agitated. Suspended in this solution are millions of microscopic robots. The bottom of the container contains energy plugs where this robots can attach themselves and recharge their tiny batteries. 

These robots only do one thing, when they touch something, they emit a spark releasing at once all the energy they have. 

You place a piece of thrash into the solution. It starts to get eaten by the army of robots zapping it. Soon there is nothing left of the thrash piece.  

I though that the robots didn't need any kind of propulsion. They would just go with the flow. 

When the solution is too contaminated you replace it.

Now, is disintegrating thrash better than dumping it in landfill? Perhaps.

#56: Continental Connections

What would it mean if every continent of the World was interconnected by floating bridges or tunnels?

How much would a connection between the US and Europe, for example, reduce in terms of shipping times, personal travel times and costs?

The thing I find most appealing in this idea is the fact that such a connection would change the World, forever. It would probably take a century or so to finish, but every man, women and child born after this would open their eyes to a World integrated without precedent.

#57: Potential Building

Imagine that every skyscraper had on top of the buillding a large water reservoir. Say take around 5 floors near to the top and turn them in to a water tank. 

A pump on the floor level can send water up to be stored. Water can also be sent down, but it it passes through a turbine to generate electricity.

This is the Potential Building: an idea to store electrical energy from the grid when this energy is cheap, such as during dawn, and to release it during the peak hours.

Now it would mean a lot to the power grid if we had such large scale storage system, cities and cities with potential buildings.

It is a real tricky to make this economical, however.

#58: Artificial Fish

That was when I've read Verne's "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas".

I imagined an artificial robot fish that would roam the oceans and locate shipwreaks for salvage.

It could concentrate its activities where it is feasible to salvage. I don't know much a about this trade but depth is clearly an issue.

It could be fully automated, what would be significantly more difficult, or remotely operated. It should be loads of fun to explore the Atlantic bottom from miles away.

#59: Isothermic Suit

I often wonder that daily temperature variations reduce lifespan, sort of a strain. I have no scientific data to back this notion however.

The idea is to create a suit that makes it easier to maintain those 98,6°F. It would have a fluid system running, embedded in the fabric, with artificial arteries and capillaries that could be heated or cooled according to need. It would serve as a secondary circulatory system, but technological in nature.

It would turn us into very weird looking people if not done properly.

#60: Disintegrating Packaging

Waste management is a big problem, and it only gets worse as our numbers grow. 

The idea is to crate a standard packaging that is made of many interlocking tiny pieces. 

These interlocking pieces, however lose their grip with some stimulus. The whole thing dissolves in your hands. 

Food, for example, would come to us from industry in these packagings. The person would dissolve the packagings after consuming the product, store it somewhere and this would be picked up and sent back to the factories to make new packagings. It should be recyclable, somehow. 

BANNER IMAGE CREDITS: NASA, ESA, and F. Paresce (INAF-IASF, Bologna, Italy), R. O'Connell (University of Virginia, Charlottesville), the Wide Field Camera 3 Science Oversight Committee, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) 

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