78 questions · 38 sources · 0 syntheses
Inventions and Gadgets
Notable and offbeat inventions and consumer devices.
Source-derived questions
Questions extracted from the papers in this topic, excluding the curated questions above.
- Did Clocky succeed commercially after winning the Ig Nobel?
- How did Dalén's sun valve use the differential expansion of metal rods to detect failing daylight?
- How did Eduardo Segura's automatic pet washing machine work from start to finish?
- How did Hurtubise test the suit's durability, and what did he document in Project Grizzly?
- How did John Keogh manage to receive an Australian patent for the wheel in 2001?
- How did Takeshi Makino repurpose forensic chemistry into a consumer product marketed to suspicious spouses?
- How did Thomas Thwaites's prosthetic exoskeleton let him move among a herd of goats?
- How did the Australian government respond to the discovery?
- How did the Bow-Lingual device claim to translate a dog's bark into an emotional category?
- How did the SpeechJammer device use delayed auditory feedback to interrupt someone talking at a distance?
- How did the doughnut shop become a Canadian civic institution over the second half of the twentieth century?
- How did the public and voters of Vilnius respond to the stunt afterward?
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- How do electrified chopsticks and straws make food taste saltier without adding salt?
- How does Clocky's wheeled design solve the problem of the ordinary snooze button?
- How does Elena Bodnar's convertible brassiere function as an emergency respiratory mask?
- How does PawSense distinguish a cat's keystrokes from a human's?
- How does a microcapsule layer on a magazine insert release fragrance when rubbed?
- How does microencapsulated fragrance stay bonded to fabric and release slowly over a working day?
- How does the Blaster anti-carjacking device work, and what triggers it?
- How does the charcoal filter in Buck Weimer's Under-Ease underwear work?
- How does the toilet identify individual users, and what is unusual about its secondary identification method?
- How quickly could the airborne wasabi compound wake a sleeping person?
- How was Gustano Pizzo's 1972 anti-hijacking device designed to work?
- How was Kuo Cheng Hsieh's anti-robbery net mechanism designed to trigger and deploy?
- How was the Blonskys' 1965 centrifugal birthing device supposed to work?
- What age did Nakamatsu claim he intended to live to as a result of his regimen?
- What alternative bank security measures does the net device compare to?
- What biomarkers can Seung-min Park's smart toilet detect from urine and stool images?
- What chemical reaction allows colorimetric tests to detect semen on fabric?
- What claims did the manufacturer make about the machine's effect on the animals inside it?
- What compound in wasabi did researchers use to design a fire alarm for deaf sleepers?
- What delay interval between speech and its playback is disruptive enough to silence a speaker?
- What design principles for shoe racks did the study suggest might reduce odour buildup?
- What did Nakamatsu believe was the connection between his diet and his inventive productivity?
- What did Robert Beaumont's survey find about patient preferences for waxed versus unwaxed floss?
- What did Yoshiro Nakamatsu do every day for over thirty-four years as part of his self-experiment?
- What does PawSense require to unlock the keyboard once it detects a cat?
- What does the commercial success of Neuticles suggest about pet owners rather than about veterinary need?
- What does the phrase 'force is force' concede about the underlying physics of the device?
- What does the popularity of Bow-Lingual suggest about why people want to believe they understand their pets' emotions?
- What encounter with a grizzly bear motivated Troy Hurtubise to build his suit of armour?
- What evidential limitations does a home test face that a criminal forensic lab does not?
- What experience during the Chernobyl disaster inspired Bodnar to design the device?
- What frequency did Howard Stapleton's device emit, and why was it chosen?
- What historical wave of hijackings motivated the invention in the first place?
- What inspired Don Featherstone's design of the plastic pink flamingo, given that the real bird was scarce in Massachusetts?
- What inspired Gregg Miller to invent Neuticles for his neutered dog Buck?
- What is the grammatical difference between a plural and a possessive that the society was defending?
- What is the intended clinical benefit of continuous, passive digestive health monitoring?
- What kitchen appliances did Ron Popeil invent and popularize through infomercials?
- What legal ambiguities did a flame-based anti-theft device raise for its inventors?
- What made the Campbells' scented advertisement patent different from a normal print ad?
- What materials went into the construction of Hurtubise's bear-proof suit?
- What open question does the patent leave about whether infants would tolerate being changed by a machine?
- What patent number was granted for the combover method, and how was it illustrated?
- What problem was Daisuke Inoue trying to solve when he built the first karaoke machine?
- What problem was Hyuk-ho Kwon's self-perfuming suit designed to solve?
- What real-world clothing decisions does this thermoregulation research actually inform?
- What real-world problems can cats walking on keyboards actually cause?
- What scholarly methods did Penfold borrow from the study of churches and trade unions to analyse doughnut shops?
- What sizes and species of animal were Neuticles eventually marketed for?
- What tasks was Iman Farahbakhsh's patented nappy-changing machine designed to perform automatically?
- What three-step procedure did the Smiths' 1977 patent describe for concealing baldness?
- What was Popeil's real genius according to the entry — the gadgets or the demonstration?
- What was the mission of John Richards's Apostrophe Protection Society?
- What weakness of conventional alarm clocks was Gauri Nanda specifically trying to defeat?
- Why did Richards eventually dissolve the society after twenty-three years?
- Why did lighthouses before 1912 require a human keeper to operate them every dusk and dawn?
- Why did the Ig Nobel committee classify a scented suit under environmental protection?
- Why did the Ig Nobel committee consider the doughnut shop a legitimate subject for academic sociology?
- Why did the Nobel committee in physics choose to honor an engineering invention rather than a theory of the universe?
- Why did the mayor of Vilnius drive an armoured personnel carrier over a parked Mercedes?
- Why do growing regions of a plant tissue behave as hydraulic sinks, and what non-local effects does this create across the tissue?
- Why does a standard electronic fire alarm fail to alert deaf people?
- Why does knowing which floss patients prefer matter for actual dental health outcomes?
- Why was identifying the exact compounds behind foot odor practically useful for cosmetics companies?
- Why was the patent never built despite being drawn up with careful engineering precision?
- Why was the patented device never actually used on a patient?
Sources
- Hydromechanical field theory of plant morphogenesis
- Ig Nobel Prize in Acoustics
- Ig Nobel Prize in Art
- Ig Nobel Prize in Biology
- Ig Nobel Prize in Biology
- Ig Nobel Prize in Biology
- Ig Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Ig Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Ig Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Ig Nobel Prize in Computer Science
- Ig Nobel Prize in Consumer Engineering
- Ig Nobel Prize in Dentistry
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- Ig Nobel Prize in Economics
- Ig Nobel Prize in Economics
- Ig Nobel Prize in Engineering
- Ig Nobel Prize in Engineering
- Ig Nobel Prize in Engineering Design
- Ig Nobel Prize in Environmental Protection
- Ig Nobel Prize in Hygiene
- Ig Nobel Prize in Literature
- Ig Nobel Prize in Managed Health Care
- Ig Nobel Prize in Medicine
- Ig Nobel Prize in Medicine
- Ig Nobel Prize in Nutrition
- Ig Nobel Prize in Nutrition
- Ig Nobel Prize in Peace
- Ig Nobel Prize in Peace
- Ig Nobel Prize in Peace
- Ig Nobel Prize in Peace
- Ig Nobel Prize in Peace
- Ig Nobel Prize in Public Health
- Ig Nobel Prize in Public Health
- Ig Nobel Prize in Public Health
- Ig Nobel Prize in Safety Engineering
- Ig Nobel Prize in Safety Engineering
- Ig Nobel Prize in Sociology
- Ig Nobel Prize in Technology
- Nobel Prize in Physics