One of my posting peeves is an "idea" that is truly only a suggestion or wish for something that everyone has thought of, that just can't be built . . . yet. Some things aren't being done because they can't be, not because the person posting is uber-creative and can leave the petty engineering to the little people.

Folding cars, helium-filled anything, different materials for common objects, all these are obvious and usually unworkable. Few of us are going to come up with new developments in highly-developed and expensively-researched fields like automobiles, bicycles, tires, dentistry, astronomy and nuclear physics. Clever twists, presented well, will get a croissant from me, but obvious unworkabilities will get hammered.

Some obvious things are simply waiting for technology to improve: Industrial Development Inevitable Over Time (IDIOT). This does not apply if the idea includes some original idea on how to improve the technology.

To me, an idea has to give at least half of the method to make something, or address at least half of the problems that a new invention will face. That's why this is the Halfbakery.

[Oct 04 2004, last modified Dec 13 2007]

Arthur C. Clarke Memorial Monolith (+55, -5)
AstronoPlane (+29, -7)
Centrifugal-center Tire (+6, -7)
Centrifugal Fans Unblocked For Braking (+3, -2)
Chain Wheels (+8, -3)
Concert Audience Controls A Spotlight (+4, -3)
Concert Dirigible (+4, -3)
Cyclist's Anklewatch (+4, -4)
Deep-submerged Vacuum Power (+3, -7)
Dogcatching Dogs (+33, -8)
Drifter Lifter (+3, -5)
Fabric-Scope Iron (+8, -7)
Fingernail-ERS (+2, -4)
Fluttering Flagpole (+19, -5)
Flywheel Rocket (+10, -5)
Foot-steered Lawnmower (+5, -6)
"Gravity Off" Switch on Ceiling (+4, -3)
Gravity-well Dodgebowl (+10, -3)
Halfbakery To You (+13, -3)
Halfcomb (+1, -4)
Hypervelocity Fireworks (+16, -2)
Inside and Outside Car Smell Comparator (+3, -4)
Jelly-Filled Oreos (+5, -5)
Magnus Effect Rocket Recovery (+1, -3)
Mentos™ and Diet Coke™ Toilet Blaster™ (+14, -2)
Nano-spike Bandages (+33, -4)
Oxygen-Hydrogen Mining Explosive (-6)
Rolling Coaster Seat (+1, -2)
Rope-swing Waterskiing (+11, -2)
Seismic Cell Towers (+4, -5)
Sell North Dakota (+2, -8)
Shivercize (+5, -6)
Stereo Smelling for Dogs (+20, -2)
Tea-Cooling Dart (+19, -2)
Text-File Reader in Cell Phone (+2, -5)
Tilted Gasoline Filling Stations (+2, -6)
Trailer Hitch Circumferential Track (+2, -6)
Tsunami Spheres (+9, -8)
Vacuum Fermentation of Beer (+9, -4)
Variable Geometry Pitch Control (+1, -2)
Virgin Earth Challenge - $25M (+8, -8)
Voice-Transmitter Switch for Noise-Cancellers (+3, -2)

halfbakery