Inventor Night

[cjsmith]

Geek party idea: get a bunch of wacky creative people together, hand them a lot of scratch paper, and give them an inventor challenge. Instead of having a games night, you have an Inventor Night. At the end of it you wind up with six or seven designs for Self-Ironing Shirts, or a sturdy Homemade Pogo Stick Shoe, or an Inexpensive One-Use Emergency Insulin Refrigerator.

If you can snag some people with specialized domain knowledge that'd be handy. Otherwise keep a computer with a 'net connection nearby. Just saying "Oh, there would be some electronics to take care of that part" is nowhere near as effective as sketching the circuit or writing pseudo-microcode. Even better if, for the simpler challenges, there are some materials and guests can try some things. (Reality TV rights optional.)

Staying on-topic isn't strictly necessary. It's fun to start out with one challenge, but maybe everyone will get off-topic and you'll wind up with a Solar-Powered Hovercraft and an Automated Dice Roller. Who knows? :-)

Comments

[firecat]

That sounds like a blast. If you have one, please invite me! (Except I'm not much of an inventor, so I probably wouldn't be very useful except as an appreciative audience.)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I don't know if I'd be the right one to host this sort of thing -- no idea what materials to have on hand, f'rex -- but if I do, you're on the list!

I think part of the idea I hadn't yet articulated is that a group of people might be an inventor even if no single individual is one. Maybe deyo has the mad science idea, branwynseye knows why putting it together one way wouldn't work but the other way would, simplykimberly remembers to round the edges to make it more kid-safe, lrc knows EXACTLY where to get metal pieces that shape...

[shadopanther.livejournal.com]

Sounds like fun. :)

I remember telling my Dad when I was in high school that I thought it'd be a good idea to recapture energy from a car's turning wheels & put it back into electrical energy. (Sadly my dad thought I was trying to make a perpetual motion machine & told me it wouldn't work.) I now see electric-hybrid cars are doing this very thing to recapture some electrical energy that otherwise would be lost as the car moves.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Absolutely! Dang, too bad your idea wasn't put into production long ago.

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure there's a way to make deyo's ideas kid-safe.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Welllll, there is that. :-)