The more important and less important things for which the year 2003 will go down in history
the land
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Every December, The New York Times examines the past year through an unusual prism: ideas. A team of investigators and reporters was sent to check the latest developments in every possible field - not only in medicine and aviation, but also in cinema and cosmetics - and extract from them the most innovative, fascinating and promising ideas.
Then this enormous intellectual scum is boiled until a mini-encyclopedia of inventions, breakthroughs and big and small theories that brought about change in 2003 is obtained (a selection of which is presented below). The interesting thing is that a significant part of the harvest of ideas of 2003 emerges precisely from highly individual thinkers: inventors working in the basement of their house, philosophers thinking their ideas from the depths of the armchair, mad scientists.
Therefore, this project is not only a collection of the significant and thought-provoking ideas raised in the past year, but also a salute to extraordinary people who work tirelessly in their laboratories and libraries and are determined to change the world, with each weapon being, in three words, a completely new idea.
flying humans
On July 31, Felix Baumgartner jumped from a plane flying at an altitude of 30 feet and began to fall to the ground of the English countryside below. But within a few seconds his wings began to flutter, and he turned, straightened, and began to soar calmly into the horizon like an eagle. Baumgartner was no longer a man experimenting with skydiving: attached to his back was a fin-like device six meters wide, made of coal fibers. This facility made him resemble the human version of a military fighter jet. It began to hover over the eastern coast of Great Britain but soon flew over the English Channel, towards France, moving at a speed of 354 km per hour.
"It's such a great feeling because it's just you, the sky, your wing and your skills," he says. Without any power supply he could not continue to test forever. But his wing allowed him to swallow 1.20 meters for every 30 cm he fell. This means that he could have traveled 35.4 km in a six-minute flight. Descending to 4,000 feet (1,220 meters), he broke through the cloud cover and saw the coast of France below. 1,000 feet later (300 meters), he opened his parachute for landing. He became the first person to cross the English Channel without using an engine.
Even in a world exhausted of all extreme sports, this is an amazing stunt. But in a short time it may become common. An Austrian company intends to start selling the "Sky-Ray", the fin-shaped wing that, in a slightly different version, was used by Umgartner. A skilled user of "Sky-Ray" will be able to perform aerobatic stunts, do rolls and slalom through the clouds. The personal wings may even become a new military device, allowing paratroopers to penetrate deeper into enemy territory, evade radar devices and heat-guided missiles, and move faster than a Cessna. The inventor of the "Sky-Ray", Alban Geisler, has already received inquiries from the US and German armies and also from a representative of the US Department of Defense, "but I cannot tell you who he is", he comments. Either way, the age-old dream of aviation has now become less mechanical and more human.
Clive Thompson
Billboards that know you
There are Americans who are willing to swear that the billboards they pass every day on their way to work are aimed at people just like them. They are not wrong. In several places in the USA there are electronic billboards that "listen" to the radio station broadcast by cars passing by. Using a special plate manufactured by "Mobiltrack", a company from Phoenix, Arizona, advertisers can now detect which radio station the drivers are listening to and then change the messages displayed on the electronic billboards, so that they match the demographic data of the listeners of those stations. That's how a Ford dealership near Roseville, California, can show commercials for pickup trucks to drivers listening to country music and commercials for family cars to listeners of adult contemporary music.
"Mobiltrack" technology is based on a fact that is not widely known about radios installed in vehicles: they not only receive the signals, but also transmit them. The car radio tunes in to a certain station by combining the signal received from the airwaves with its internal signal transmitted out. This is the same weak internal signal that the "Mobiletrack" plate receives.
At the moment, the device works similar to a public opinion poll: it picks up a sample of radio stations broadcast by passing cars and then calculates the listening patterns. But technology is advancing and the intention is getting faster. "Mobiletrack" intends to launch next year a digital version that will allow the billboards to respond almost immediately to the demographic patterns of the listeners passing through the area, and to change the ads displayed much more accurately.
Jennifer Berrios
Makeup for men
In this era of the rule of the "metrosexual", or the straight man with aesthetic awareness, the launch of Jean Paul Gaultier's "Tout Beau" line seems like a cultural necessity. "Tout Beau" is the first line of makeup products of its kind designed for men. According to the press release published by Gaultier, the "Tout Beau" products - which include powder, concealer, eye pencil and lipstick in three colors - are a bold and masculine line of revolutionary products designed to "enhance masculinity" and offer "all men the right to look naturally handsome".
Gaultier declared that 90% of men's make-up products sold in France were sold to heterosexual men. And since the launch of "Tout Beau" in the US last month, sales have been brisk: at Macy's, a stock of products worth $13,000 was sold within a week. In response, observers in the fashion world already estimate that they will not be surprised to find men standing in line for mascara.
David Rakoff
Cancer vaccine
Treating cancer with radiation or chemotherapy is a bit like bombing a house to get rid of pests: the goal will be achieved, but valuable things will also be damaged. For many years, researchers have been looking for a more targeted method that will not damage healthy tissue. Now such a method may have been found in a most surprising place: the immune system.
When invading "foreign" cells, such as bacteria, the immune system acts like a well-organized militia. The sentinels called "dendritic cells" wait at the entrances, like those in the skin, ready to cleave the invading cells. After this operation, small particles of the invaders (called antigens) remain on the shell of the branched cells. This display serves as a signal for special cells - called "killer T cells" - to multiply. T cells are designed to recognize one specific antigen, and when activated they sweep through the blood searching for and destroying any cell that carries that antigen.
But cancer cells have a sneaky way of evading the body's natural defense mechanisms. Malignant cells often resemble normal cells and therefore the immune system does not attack them. One can imagine it as if the cancer tumor cells bypass the sentinels - the branching cells - by disguising themselves in a familiar mantle.
However, the researchers managed to find a way to harness the power of T cells for a vaccine against cancer. By separating the stem cells from the patient's blood and introducing cancer antigens into them, they can recreate the first step in the immune system's response to invaders. The branched cells "digest" and display the cancer antigens, and as they are injected back into the blood circulation, they activate the T cells and send them a message that causes them to destroy all the cells that carry the cancer antigens.
The dream of finding a vaccine against cancer has existed for many years, but the necessary technology is only now becoming possible. Researchers from Dendron, a biotechnology company from Seattle, presented in June data from the first study on a vaccine against prostate cancer. Their vaccine (called "Provenge") was injected intravenously into 82 men suffering from advanced prostate cancer. It was a small trial, but the researchers found that among vaccinated patients who had less aggressive cancer, the disease spread more slowly than among similar patients who received placebo injections. After six months, 36% of the vaccinated patients stopped the spread of the disease, compared to only 4% of the placebo patients.
Dendron began vaccine trials for several types of cancer, including ovarian, breast and colon cancer. The initial results look promising. Although the research is in its early stages, it seems that one conclusion can be drawn: the best defense may be an attack.
Sandeep Jauhar
The coincidence theory
Millions of people believe in the "phenomenon of the anomaly" such as a sixth sense, unexplained coincidence and healing through healing. But science is not convinced. After all, these anomalous phenomena seem to contradict everything we know about the way mind and matter affect each other. But all that may be about to change. Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer, a professor of psychology from California, presented this year a conceptual model that scientifically explains events that seem inexplicable.
In 1991 Mayer herself encountered an inexplicable phenomenon. She was looking for stolen family property, and as a challenge she turned to get help from a man who was about 1,300 km away from her and claimed to have a sixth sense. To her surprise he was able to tell her exactly where the missing item was. Mayer wanted a scientific explanation and therefore began to investigate the phenomenon, a study that lasted ten years.
Meyer's research and articles eventually led her to Robert G. Jahn, a professor of science and engineering at Princeton. Since 1979, Jan has compiled a mountain of data documenting people's ability to change the outcome of a "random event generator" - basically a machine designed to reproduce a perfect coin toss time and time again - in a marginal but statistically significant way. Mayer and Jahn compared the latest research from the fields of neuroscience, psychoanalytic psychology, and quantum physics and discovered some intriguing overlaps.
Just as psychologists were engaged during a whole century in the study of the subconscious, so physicists were engaged in the study of the physical shadow field of "hidden power relations", which includes quantum mechanics and string theories. These two ethereal domains disrupt the way we understand logic and physics, space and time. Jahn and Mayer, in any case, believe that the anomaly phenomenon may be the result of a certain type of information exchange between the subconscious and the intangible - to that extent. A "sixth sense" may actually be bits of information that pass from the physical dimension to the subconscious and permeate the consciousness; On the other hand, in the opposite direction, the subconscious may be endowed with the ability to subtly change the physical world.
For now the model is more of a way to examine the "phenomenon of the anomaly" than a real solution. "Even though we are far from finding evidence that will prove his correctness," Mayer noted in a speech she gave this year, "we can find a fascinating basis on which he will work."
Jason Fletch
Grass that is resistant to rain
When there is a lack of water, as it happens in our world sometimes more and more fights, the lawn is the first to suffer. Now comes a ray of hope from the fertile soil of grass science: a species of grass called "siltgrass", or "seashore paspalum". This grass is drought resistant - it needs half the amount of water compared to the classic grass varieties; And it can withstand random saltwater irrigation, which is a death sentence for the average lawn. Of course, this green miracle does not solve the basic problem, bringing rain to dry areas, but Paspalum grass is ideal for walkways and properties overlooking the sea, where salt spray is common, and can also thrive on purified water.
Alan Burdick
The ethical dodger
In an advertisement that appeared on the back of the September-October issue of "Adbusters", the magazine for opponents of globalization, a new tactic was announced in the long-running struggle to cause a headache for the Nike company and its chairman, Phil Knight. The ad reads: "Phil Knight had a dream. He will sell shoes. He will sell dreams. He will get rich. He will use exploitative factories if he has to. Then suddenly a new shoe appeared. normal simple cheap fair intended for one thing only. to kick an elephant's butt".
Instead of criticizing the market of shoe manufacturers, as it has done for the past 14 years, Adbusters is now choosing to join it by producing a shoe called the Blackfoot (or "Unswoosher"), a low-top athletic shoe made of canvas with a white dot printed on it instead of the company logo. . If the magazine receives at least 5,000 orders for these shoes, which it will sell for $40 a pair, it will begin producing them in what Kala Lassen, its founder, defines as a "clean" factory in China. "There are many people who want to jump over the dead body of the old left," Lassen said recently. "We decided to stop complaining about Nike. Why don't we make ten million dollars and use it for our own campaign? I'm really tired of whiners."
Joel Lovell
beat on flop
The production of a failed film in Hollywood has always brought with it an avoidance of expressing regret or sorrow. Instead, studio managers and stars always chose the alternative of evasion, denial or innocence for the sake of it. John Travolta, for example, defended the film "The Battle for Earth", which received a lot of ridicule, with the surprising claim that "many critics did not give sympathetic reviews to 'The Eighth Passenger', '2001 A Space Odyssey' or 'Blade Runner' in their early days , but have since changed their position. I feel that this is what will happen to the 'Battle for Earth'."
But in September, the newspaper "Variety" reported that some of the leaders of Hollywood, plagued by failures, adopted a new course of action in the face of strong criticism: they choose to join the chorus. In some cases, they even stand at the head of the review tensioners.
Following the dismal premiere of "Gigley", for example, Ben Affleck, one of its main stars, chose to list the film's weaknesses publicly and at length. "It just didn't work," he said. "We tried to fix it, but it was like trying to connect a fish tail to a donkey's head." He later appeared on Jay Leno's show and read aloud the harshest reviews of the film. He was joined by Joe Roth, the head of the studio that produced "Gigley", who told journalists after seeing the first version: "I wanted to kill myself".
Amy Pascal, chairman of Columbia Films, explained the lukewarm response to the sequel to "Charlie's Angels" by noting that "you can't always trust the formula." Vincent Gallo, the star, writer and director of "The Brown Bunny" was initially outraged by the harsh reviews his film received at the Cannes Film Festival, but later issued a grandiose official apology saying that he never intended to make "a pretentious film, a film full of itself, a useless film, An unattractive film” (he later retracted his apology and said he cursed critic Roger Ebert's gut).
This innovative Hollywood idea, to finally admit the facts as they are, also guided Jeff Zucker, the head of NBC, when he was asked to explain the failure of some of the new programs presented by the network in the fall. "Some of the plans were just bad," he simply replied.
Adam Sternberg
The food simulator
At a technological conference held in July, scientists from the University of Tsukuba in Japan unveiled the world's first "food simulator". The device, which looks like a scary toothbrush, is supposed to replicate the taste, feel and sound caused by chewing different types of food.
To run the simulator, the researchers must first analyze and record the experience of eating the food they want to imitate. With the help of specially prepared sensors placed inside the mouth, they check the strength required to bite the food and identify the main chemical components that give it its unique taste. At the same time, using a small microphone, they record the sonic vibrations of the jaw in action. After collection, this data is transferred to the food simulator. When the virtual eater "takes a bite", a small motor in the simulator simulates the resistance of the food being tested, while a tube sprays a chemical cocktail that reproduces the combination of the five basic taste sensations: sweetness, sourness, bitterness, saltiness - and the meaty taste known by the Japanese as "umami". To complete the illusion, a small speaker fixed in the device emits the appropriate chewing sounds.
The inventors of the device do not specify what exactly the food simulator will be used for, but according to them it will help in the preparation of new food products - in particular when the concern is the degree of chewiness of the food, as in the case of food for the elderly. In a spirit of generosity, the inventors estimated that the food simulator "will allow young people to understand the difficulties of biting that adults feel". In other words, the simulator will not only allow people to experience eating caviar without emptying their bank account, it will also deepen intergenerational understanding.
Lawrence Osborne
Gratitude visits
Quite a few of us do not excel at saying thank you. Instead of thanking from the bottom of our hearts with warm words and a brave handshake, we tend to send a weak "thank you" greeting verbally or in writing. Let us then acknowledge Martin E. P. Seligman, lecturer in psychology and former president of the American Psychological Association. Seligman created what he defines as a "gratitude visit", which happens like this: you think of a person in your life who was nice to you and you didn't thank him properly. You write a detailed "thank you letter" to that person, in which you explain in tangible terms why you are grateful. Then you visit him and read the statement out loud. Seligman claims that this is a powerful ritual. "Everyone cries when you pay a gratitude visit," he says. "It's very exciting for both people."
Seligman is the founder of the "positive psychology" movement, an increasingly influential branch of psychology that does not investigate what causes people to function poorly, but rather what causes them to be happy and satisfied. His research, like the work of many academics researching the field of "hedonistic well-being", suggests that gratitude is a central component of personal happiness. People who are grateful for specific things in their past, who reflect over and over on sweet successes instead of bitter disappointments, tend to be more satisfied with the present. The gratitude visit, according to Seligman, can be an effective way "to increase the intensity, duration and frequency of the positive memory".
Seligman began testing the idea in a positive psychology class he teaches at the University of Pennsylvania. He tasked students with performing the thank-you visit and the exercise proved popular with both visitors and thank-you recipients. This year he began teaching the technique to hundreds of instructors, clinical psychologists, educators and consultants. According to him, a visit of gratitude can also create its own momentum, when those who receive it begin to think for themselves who they did not thank and make their own visits, as the recipients of their thanks do later. In the end we will all be Grateful Dead.
Dan Pink
Beauty in injection
The idea that beauty can be injected has gained momentum in the past year following the proliferation of injectable anti-aging treatments. These preparations boast names that sound clinical and exciting ("Cosmoderm", "Silicon 1,000", etc.), although in simple terms they are actually just wrinkle fillers. They are considered a replacement for plastic surgery and the next generation of Botox products, which can banish expression lines and small wrinkles around the eyes, but not the wrinkles around the mouth. About half a dozen of these preparations are awaiting approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) but are already widely used in Europe.
The principle of operation is simple: using a thin needle, a gel is injected between two layers of the skin - thus renewing or replacing a substance called hyaluronic acid, which is created naturally in the body but diminishes as we age and creates the wrinkles. Quite a few women in New York spend $2,000 every few months on these fillings, the cost of which is estimated at about $500 for a treatment that lasts about six months.
Kathy Horin
The trend that has passed
In an article published in 1997 in "The New Yorker", Trend's typical life path was sketched. First, "innovators", known as "loud people", become the pioneers of a new style. Then the same style is adopted by the "first adopters" (or people who hang around in the company of the voices). In the next stage, the trend moves to the "primary majority" (people who see loud people on the other side of the street), and following it to the "late majority" (people who watch loud people on MTV). In the end, it infiltrates the "thugs behind" (you and me).
However, this year this cycle was broken, if not completely destroyed. Certain trends have been declared trendy and fasa at the same time - often in the same article. The most famous example is the "truck drivers hat", a baseball cap made of a combination of rubber and plastic mesh, often decorated with a slogan or a brand name. Chroniclers of this trend agree that the tipping point occurred in February, when pop star Justin Timberlake was photographed wearing such a hat after the Grammy Awards. However, shortly after its appearance, contemptuous condemnations of the hats appeared in fashion-conscious weblogs. The result was that mainstream media outlets began to inform their readers about the popularity of the hat - while at the same time explaining that the trend is already on the decline. In an article published in the "New York Times" in May, a hat-wearing musician explained that the hats, which used to be fashionable, have now become so unfashionable that it is fashionable to wear them.
The confusion was so great that Rolling Stone magazine opened its "Hot Things of 2003" list with a picture of a trucker hat and then, of course, immediately explained that the trend was over. "The hot talk and the counter movement are now exactly the same," the reporter explained.
The emergence of the hot-and-not-hot thing trend can be attributed in part to the "cool" cycle itself, which by its very nature is constantly increasing the pace. But there is also a practical reason why the cycle outdid itself this year. Fashion companies such as "Von Dutch", which manufacture drivers' hats, are terrified that their hats will become an item that is everywhere and therefore lose their appeal. Therefore, instead of increasing production, to meet the demand for hats, Von Datsch raised prices and avoided producing large quantities of the popular models. Due to these tactics, by the time the average customer succeeds in buying the fashionable product, the "innovators" are already far ahead of him, with the media following them. Soon in the shopping center near your home: hot trends that are completely fad.
Adam Sternberg
pantyhose spray
The Tokyo-based "Nissin Medico" company introduced tights in a spray tank in February. You will finally be able to cover your legs in silk stockings the same way you cover an easy chair with a layer of paint.
The inventor of the air tights, Yoshiomi Hameda, came up with the idea one hot summer when a woman in his office complained that she had to wear tights in the heat, as required by the company. "The challenge," said Hemade, "was to create something that would make the legs look beautiful but not hide the pedicure."
The air tights are not yet sold in the US but can be purchased in Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia and Singapore. In Japan, about half a million spray cans have been sold so far, mainly to women working in offices and students (the price of each can is 15 dollars and it lasts between ten and 15 days of "pantyhose"). The tights can be taken off with soap and water and, as the website claims, "they don't press!"
Patricia Mark
nicotine
The owner of a well in Florida may have found a solution that will appease the wrath of smokers who are now being kicked out of wells as well: a martini mixed with nicotine-rich tobacco. The "Nicotine", as it is called, comes in different flavors, including "Shachta" (one shot) and "Black Lung" (mixed with "Kloa" coffee liqueur). The result: the stimulator and the suppressor enter the boxing ring in your body and fight for control. But this is certainly not a new feeling for those who have smoked in a well before.
Larry Wald owns a well in Fort Lauderdale. Following the regulation forbidding smoking in pubs, the 45-year-old Valed worked for months to find an alternative to expel the smokers to the street. He labored to find liqueurs that could be mixed to give the nicotine going down the throat a smoky sensation compared to the burn of the whiskey; Conducted experiments to determine the amounts of tobacco needed for the mixing process (an effort that made him, according to him, "fly like a kite"); And he even conducted experiments with different tobacco mixtures, since the usual tobacco mixture does not have a sufficient amount of nicotine. The final product was a clear liquid that looked very healthy, which made customers wonder if it even included nicotine - and forced Wald to add food coloring to give the drink the distinct amber hue that states: "poisonous".
This great effort was not made in vain. On July 1st at midnight, when the smoking ban in Florida went into effect, Wald started serving nicotine. Today he sells dozens of such drinks every night. Those who can't get the right levels of vertigo from drinking regular nicotine (which includes whiskey, apple-flavored liqueur and secret ingredients) can drink a mint version, which includes a shot of amaretto, cognac and crème de menthe. At least Vald doesn't need to hang warning notices on behalf of the Ministry of Health.
Marshall Sela
PowerPoint makes you dumb
In August, the Commission of Inquiry into the Columbia disaster published the first chapter of the report explaining why the ferry crashed. As expected, it turned out that the spacecraft's insulation material was the main cause of the disaster. But the committee also pointed to another culprit: "PowerPoint", Microsoft's famous presentation software.
NASA, the committee argued, relies too much on PowerPoint for the presentation of complex information, rather than using the traditional tools of technical reports written in ink on paper. When NASA engineers estimated that damage to the wing might have been caused during the mission, they presented their findings in a confusing PowerPoint presentation - so crammed with bullet points and acronyms that it was almost impossible to understand. "It is easy to understand how a senior manager might have read this presentation and not understand that it deals with a life-threatening situation," the committee pointed out sternly.
PowerPoint is the most popular tool in the world for presenting information. There are currently 400 million copies of the software circulating in the market, and there is almost no business decision that is not made without it. But what if PowerPoint really makes us dumber?
Edward Taft, the famous theorist of information presentation, made the exact same argument this year in a long and furious article called "The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint". In the 28 pages of the thin booklet he published, Taft claimed that the presence of Microsoft software everywhere forces people to distort the data to the point of lack of understanding. As an example he mentioned the fact that the low resolution of the PowerPoint slide means that it usually only contains 40 words, or barely eight seconds of reading. PowerPoint also encourages users to rely on a bulleted list, an "analytically incorrect" technique, he wrote, that bypasses the speaker's responsibility to tie all the information together.
Perhaps the worst is the way PowerPoint presents tables. Tables that appear in newspapers such as the "Wall Street Journal" contain up to 120 items on average. This allows readers to compare large data files. However, as Taft discovered, PowerPoint users typically produce tables containing only 12 items. In the end, he concluded, PowerPoint is imbued with "an attitude of commercialism that turns everything into a sales speech."
Microsoft executives, of course, disagree with this assertion. Simon Marks, PowerPoint's product manager, responds and claims that Taft is a fan of "information density", presenting tons of data to an audience. This can also be done using PowerPoint, he says, it's a matter of choice. "If people are told that they will watch a terribly crowded presentation, they will not want it."
PowerPoint still has fans in the corridors of power. Colin Powell used a slide show in February when he presented his arguments before the United Nations that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Of course, given that those weapons have yet to be found, Taft may have been on to something. Perhaps PowerPoint is uniquely suited to the modern age of confusion - an age where manipulating facts is just as important as presenting them clearly. If you have nothing to say, maybe you just need the right tool to help you how not to say it.
Clive Thompson
Jules Verne project
The dream of exploring the heart of the earth was probably discovered at the age of knowledge that the earth is round - or rather spherical - and therefore has a center. However, until last May, when David Stevenson, a lecturer at the California Institute of Technology ("Caltech"), proposed a physical method for sending test instruments to the outer core of the Earth, the dream was the lot of dreamers such as Jules Verne and the creators of the science fiction film "The Core". After all, we are talking about a place whose temperature reaches 4,000 degrees Celsius and the pressure there is up to 3.5 million times higher than on the surface of the earth. Even worse, even though the outer core is only about 2,900 km deep, every centimeter of the way is solid rock. As of today, we have only managed to reach the anemic depth of about 11 km, on the Kola Peninsula near Murmansk in Russia. The drill got stuck in rock in 1989 and the project was abandoned.
Stevenson's plan, published in the journal Nature under the title "Mission to the Earth's Heart: A Modest Proposal," bypasses the difficulties of mechanical excavation and instead relies on the natural process of iron deposition, a process that itself may have been responsible for creating the Earth's core 4.5 billion years ago. years
The idea is to collect at least 100 million kg of molten iron in a place such as Iceland, where the coldest and outermost part of the Earth is thinner, and then crack the mantle, either through "excavation", as Stevenson says, "or creating a nuclear explosion" ( "There is no doubt that one should be careful about the impact on the environment when carrying out the fission", he says. At this point, the molten iron will be poured into the crack in the Earth's mantle, along with a small fleet of grapefruit-sized research instruments made of iron alloy. Gravity will do the rest and pull the iron mass into the Earth's core in about a week.
Donald Turcotte, a geophysicist from California, says that Stevenson's plan has some practical problems, but nevertheless the project is "fascinating and stimulating the imagination - and it is worth continuing to follow it."
William Speed Weed
The power of children
Raj Pandian, professor of engineering and computer science, looked at children playing and did not ask "Where do they have so much energy?", but "How can I turn this energy into power?" In February, Pandian demonstrated a plank swing that he improved using materials bought at hardware stores. He installed pneumatic cylinders under the seats and connected each of them to a small tank. As the children go up and down, the swing blows air through the cylinders into the containers. When the air fills the tanks, another simple device, a blower, converts the energy of the compressed air into electrical power, which is stored in the batteries.
Two children swinging on the swing for half an hour can generate enough electricity to run a laptop for 40-20 minutes. Due to the fact that the system also stores energy, Pandian hopes that it can be turned into a clean and reliable source of electricity for those places, such as schools, near which there are playgrounds and children playing in them.
Pandian, who used his own son during the experiments, is currently awaiting patent approval before beginning large-scale production of his invention, which can also be applied to regular swings and merry-go-rounds. "It's basically free energy," he says. As long as there are children who want to play, the supply is inexhaustible. *
Dan Pink
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