Segmentation is one of the 40 Inventive Principles of Problem Solving.
Rite Press, The ‘No Mess’ French Press, is a Kickstarter project with $122,000 USD pledged of $20,000 USD goal, so clearly the team behind it on are onto something. Patented innovation Standard French presses can be difficult to clean as the grounds get pushed to the bottom of the press. Rite Press promises to make…
Dodge’s SRT Demon Challenger makes fast lap times the old fashioned way: big displacement, big supercharger, big tires. But it has some 21st century tricks up its bulging fender flares, too. The SRT Power Chiller A common problem with high powered engines is the enormous demands for cooling. Some cars can’t keep up and the…
Prompted by the aggressive moves of Tesla Motors, the news is full of full-line car manufacturers announcing electric vehicles in the near future. One could easily conclude that the electric future is already written and that the internal combustion engine (ICE) will soon be put out to pasture. Even so, companies are still labouring to…
Elon Musk named his car company Tesla in honour of Nikola Tesla, a Serbian-American best known for his contributions to the design of modern alternating current electric systems. Tesla (the man) developed the AC induction motor design that Tesla (the company) used in their first roadster, their current (pun!) Model S and Model X. It…
This post examines some of Steve Jobs’s application of Principles to building the Apple company. It draws background from this Harvard Business Review article, The Real Leadership Lessons of Steve Jobs. Minimizing clutter Steve Jobs was focused on minimizing clutter. This means removing extraneous elements (Principle 2 – Taking Out). When the iPhone was being developed…
As I write this the Toronto area is enjoying a brief winter warm spell – it’s only freezing! Two weeks ago we saw temperatures around 20 degrees celsius below freezing. My house, like most newer homes in Canada, is heated with a high-efficiency, or condensing furnace. High-efficiency furnaces can achieve from 89% to 98% fuel efficiency.…
Multiple light bulb moments The light bulb is often used as a symbol of inspiration, perhaps because of so many ideas that went into creating the light bulb and its impact on modern life. The light bulb wasn’t so much invented as much as improved over time by various people and organizations. Thomas Edison wasn’t…
One motor per wheel The notion of having one motor per wheel in an electric vehicle like a Tesla has been mooted and debated. The consensus seems to be that the pros (electronic authority over torque vectoring – no mechanical bits required, eliminating the weight of a differential) are outweighed by the cons (additional cost…
In his YouTube video Grady Hillhouse explains “Dirt is probably the cheapest and simplest construction material out there, but it’s not very strong compared to other choices. Luckily geotechnical engineers have developed a way to strengthen earthen materials with almost no additional effort…” The secret is Principle 1 – Segmentation. To prevent a soil structure from…
Alec Watson is the creator of the YouTube channel “Technology Creations”. His videos are all worth a watch, as they get into the fascinating details of how technology, and sometimes quite old technology, really works. Today I watched his video on how roller coaster design balances the economic need to have a high throughput of…