Fresh ideas, inventions that I pass along to the world. Maybe they already exist. Maybe they’re useful. Maybe they’re fun. Maybe I don’t have the time, money, and resources to patent them, or develop them, or both. At least by writing about them here I am less likely to forget them. 

The idea is simple. I’ll use my dentist visit for an example. Traditionally, the patient is given tinted glasses to wear to block some of the light from the large overhead dentist’s light. The idea is to tune the wavelength, or polarization, or both of the light and the glasses so the light can be as bright as necessary, and the patient will be blocked from that frequency but not the ambient light or view.

The inspiration came by noticing my hygienist had switched to a headlamp rather than the overhead. That refreshed my experience of working around technical lasers in a lab setting where protective eyewear is required. The irony was that, the very lasers we were working with became invisible – which was the point. (Keep that eyewear on until after you’ve left the lab! And then make sure you take it off because you might look a bit odd at lunch.)

The eyewear I wore at the dentist was familiar, comfortable, and even fit over my glasses. Why not tune the eyewear to the light source and remove any extra distraction to the patient who is looking up at either the big old light on an arm, or even a headlamp on a dentist or hygienist?

Corollaries include any environment where the light source can be tuned. The hygienist immediately suggested tuned car headlights and tinted windows or eyewear. The headlights would still light the road, but the peak distraction could be dramatically lowered. This works as long as the reflected light, which is the light we see from the illuminated objects, would have sufficiently shifted frequency or polarization to be visible to the interiors of all vehicles.

Whether this Fresh Idea is serious or silly, writing about it is also a little gift to me. I enjoy playing with such ideas. Evidently, so do some readers. Years after I’ve posted some of them, they continue to attract traffic. Two of the more popular ones are: Dockside Tidal Power and Passive Pump. Maybe someone else has the resources to pursue them. Maybe they’ll remember where they got the idea and will be gracious enough to include me. Who knows? But the world has many problems. We need new ideas. It is hard to know which ones will make the biggest difference, but if ideas stay locked inside heads, the ideas may be revealed too late, or never.