Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
h a l f b a k e r y
i v n i n seeks n e t o

idea: add, search, annotate, link, view, overview, recent, by name, random

meta: news, help, about, links, report a problem

account: browse anonymously, or get an account and write.

user:
pass:
register,


                   

Please log in.
Before you can vote, you need to register. Please log in or create an account.

Onion on a Spring

gives perfect landing in the lap-basket
  (+10, -3)
(+10, -3)
  [vote for,
against]

Seriously, it's more than just a pun on Spring Onions. You see, onions grow underground, don't they? Or even if they don't, they grow lower down than most people would normally have their hands on passing by. And I know many people who've gone mad about how, during onion picking sessions in the summer, they've developed the most terrible, life-threatening backache. So what you do is you genetically engineer an onion that projects a spring down towards the Earth's corewards as it grows up. And as it gets older still, chemical energy transmitted down the spring makes it 'wind up' - by a process not dissimilar in fact to reverse osmosis. By the time it's ripe, the spring will be somewhere way down below, and fully wound up. As some suffering back-person walks by, therefore, the spring fires (bang, boing) and projects a perfectly formed onion into the air, requiring only a deft catching in the basket of the peripatetic labourer.

Of course the spring must be self-detaching - and yes, it would be. Plastic might be best for this.

eehen, Jul 09 2000

Baked by evolution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_onion
Topsetting/Egyptian/walking onions have bulbs on BOTH ENDS. [hello_c, Jul 09 2000, last modified Oct 21 2004]

[link]






       There would have to be some mechanism to prevent early springing. After all, you wouldn't want to be showered in onions every time a juggernaut went past your house. Apart from that though, it seems a sound idea to me.
DrBob, Jul 14 2000
  

       <giggles at the vision of hundreds of onions making a bid for freedom from the back of a truck...>
StarChaser, Jul 14 2000
  

       <snickers at the thought of thousands of onion pickers out of work due to eye injuries and concussions from looking the wrong way>   

       And I can just see two rabbits watching this and saying, "Thank God they didn't use carrots!".
BigThor, Sep 06 2000
  

       Great idea. But the idea is great not for a springing onion, but an onion that produces plastic. If you can do it, you'll be a millionaire.
Vance, Feb 05 2001
  

       Agree with UnaBubba - didn't the UN ban the use of things like this?
goff, Apr 25 2001
  

       The spring needith not be of plastic, turgor pressure could cause it to jump. In fact their is a species of flower which buds pops open with enough force to expell its seeds a few inches.
ImBack, Aug 20 2002
  

       The 8th Avatar of Vishnu goes by your house, DrBob?
cameron, Sep 12 2002
  

       While innovative, I feel this is quite a bit less than half-baked.
white, Aug 21 2003
  
      
[annotate]
  


 

back: main index

business  computer  culture  fashion  food  halfbakery  home  other  product  public  science  sport  vehicle