inventions

Invention: Greensulate
Inventor: Eben Bayer and Gavin McIntyre
Cost: $1,500
Time: 2 years
Is It Ready Yet? 1 2 3 4 5

Eben Bayer and Gavin McIntyre want to line the walls of your home with mushrooms. The young entrepreneurs have created a strong, low-cost biomaterial that could replace the expensive, environmentally harmful Styrofoam and plastics used in wall insulation, as well as in packaging and a host of other products. Wind-turbine blades and auto-body panels aren't out of the realm of possibility, either.

Invention: Greensulate
Inventor: Eben Bayer and Gavin McIntyre
Cost: $1,500
Time: 2 years
Is It Ready Yet? 1 2 3 4 5

Eben Bayer and Gavin McIntyre want to line the walls of your home with mushrooms. The young entrepreneurs have created a strong, low-cost biomaterial that could replace the expensive, environmentally harmful Styrofoam and plastics used in wall insulation, as well as in packaging and a host of other products. Wind-turbine blades and auto-body panels aren't out of the realm of possibility, either.

For all you holiday anglers, today's featured Invention Award winner is something to aspire to: a fishing lure that doesn't pollute once it ends up on the bottom of the lake.

Ben Hobbins didn’t set out to clean up his local lakes, but his IronClads baits do exactly that. The Wisconsin inventor’s idea — fishing lures that are extra-strong, eco-friendly and nontoxic — solves a serious, if little-known environmental problem.

For all you holiday anglers, today's featured Invention Award winner is something to aspire to: a fishing lure that doesn't pollute once it ends up on the bottom of the lake.

Ben Hobbins didn’t set out to clean up his local lakes, but his IronClads baits do exactly that. The Wisconsin inventor’s idea — fishing lures that are extra-strong, eco-friendly and nontoxic — solves a serious, if little-known environmental problem.

Today's featured Invention Award winner really requires no justification--it's an unmanned, armed tank faster than anything the US Army has. Behold, the Ripsaw.

Cue up the Ripsaw’s greatest hits on YouTube, and you can watch the unmanned tank tear across muddy fields at 60 mph, jump 50 feet, and crush birch trees. But right now, as its remote driver inches it back and forth for a photo shoot, it’s like watching Babe Ruth forced to bunt with the bases loaded. The Ripsaw, lurching and belching black puffs of smoke, somehow seems restless.

Today's featured Invention Award winner really requires no justification--it's an unmanned, armed tank faster than anything the US Army has. Behold, the Ripsaw.

Cue up the Ripsaw’s greatest hits on YouTube, and you can watch the unmanned tank tear across muddy fields at 60 mph, jump 50 feet, and crush birch trees. But right now, as its remote driver inches it back and forth for a photo shoot, it’s like watching Babe Ruth forced to bunt with the bases loaded. The Ripsaw, lurching and belching black puffs of smoke, somehow seems restless.

Today's featured Invention Awards winner is the Audeo, a voice synthesizer that gives back the ability to speak to those with vocal cord or neurological damage. Be sure to check out the rest of 2009's Invention Award winners here.

When Michael Callahan was 17, he lost his short-term memory when he hit his head in a skateboarding accident. "The neural pathways were all wrong," he recalls. Within weeks, he was back to normal, but the incident left him thinking, how could he help people who had permanently lost abilities that most of us take for granted? Five years later, he came up with the Audeo, a tiny device that detects electrical activity between the brain and vocal cords and turns it into audible speech.

Today's featured Invention Awards winner is the Audeo, a voice synthesizer that gives back the ability to speak to those with vocal cord or neurological damage. Be sure to check out the rest of 2009's Invention Award winners here.

When Michael Callahan was 17, he lost his short-term memory when he hit his head in a skateboarding accident. "The neural pathways were all wrong," he recalls. Within weeks, he was back to normal, but the incident left him thinking, how could he help people who had permanently lost abilities that most of us take for granted? Five years later, he came up with the Audeo, a tiny device that detects electrical activity between the brain and vocal cords and turns it into audible speech.

Right now, somewhere in America, there’s an inventor in a garage on the verge of something big. It might not be a cure for leukemia or a rocket to Mars, but some unexpected innovations can be almost as profound. Like the fisherman who made a lure that doesn’t damage the environment. Or the college kids who built a shock absorber that saves fuel by turning potholes into power. Here in our third annual Invention Awards, we present these and eight other standout inventors whose creativity and hard work are making our lives better, as well as the secrets for getting your own great idea out of the garage and into the world.

Invention: GenShock
Inventor: Shakeel Avadhany, Zack Anderson, Zack Jackowski, Ryan Bavetta and Vladimir Tarasov
Cost: $100,000
Time: 2 years
Is It Ready Yet? 1 2 3 4 5

The idea for an energy-producing shock absorber started humbly enough, just another wild invention tossed out during a late-night dorm-room bull session. Only, the students involved were among MIT's best, and they actually went ahead and built it. Two years later, they've got a shiny Hummer H1, loaned by the manufacturer to use as a rolling testbed, and their GenShock may soon find its way into the military's fleet of Humvees.

Invention: GenShock
Inventor: Shakeel Avadhany, Zack Anderson, Zack Jackowski, Ryan Bavetta and Vladimir Tarasov
Cost: $100,000
Time: 2 years
Is It Ready Yet? 1 2 3 4 5

The idea for an energy-producing shock absorber started humbly enough, just another wild invention tossed out during a late-night dorm-room bull session. Only, the students involved were among MIT's best, and they actually went ahead and built it. Two years later, they've got a shiny Hummer H1, loaned by the manufacturer to use as a rolling testbed, and their GenShock may soon find its way into the military's fleet of Humvees.

Invention: Vascular Pathways
Inventor: Amir Belson
Cost: $600,000
Time: 6 years
Is It Ready Yet? 1 2 3 4 5

When Amir Belson flew from Israel for a pediatric fellowship at Stanford University in 1998, he carried a list of 64 ideas for medical inventions. Many of the concepts were influenced by the years he served as a flight surgeon in the Israeli air force, while others came from time spent in a neonatal intensive-care unit. One of them was an idea for a better intravenous catheter, one that wouldn’t damage veins or kink inside of them. By 2005, he had made his first prototype.

Ladies and gentlemen, for your consideration -- a real-life Rube Goldberg machine! As you may or may not be aware, Rube Goldberg was an early 20th century cartoonist (and engineer). His cartoons depicted imaginary machines capable of performing ordinary tasks in an extremely complicated way. Here in these modern times, we see the Rube Goldberg legacy in the children's game called "Mousetrap." In the educational arena, the building of Rube Goldberg machines has become a popular project in high school and college physics classes, and for hobbyists dabbling in this whimsical genre. Why? Because these contraptions beautifully illustrate a number of fundamental physics principles.

What if you knew that a ten-minute podium presentation could alter your life's course for decades? Seasoned entrepreneurs sweat out this kind of tension when they make elevator pitches to venture capitalists. But at the Pete Conrad Spirit of Innovation Awards Summit, the presenters on the hot seat are all between 14 and 18 years old.

Two of the great inventors of our time finally get their due: Wallace and Gromit have a museum exhibit devoted to their inventions -- from the snowmanotron to the crackervac -- as well as true but equally quirky inventions. Who knew someone cared enough about the canaries that went down into mines to build them a resuscitation chamber?

Also in today's links: an Egyptian hoax that will soon make the rounds of middle school slumber parties, hermit crab torture, and more.