Flood Control

A couple years ago the flooding did quite a bit of damage through out the country. I've come up with a few ideas on the subject.

First a gelatin could be applied along the sides of the river to provide a buffer to the banks. This would help channel the river and keeping in on course by keeping the water contained. That would be the first phase approach for initial flooding.

Second would be large metal barriers dropped along the banks that are super heated. The flood would be minimized because the water would be converted to steam. Part of the steam could be routed back to continue providing the power to heat the metal. 

Third for more extreme flooding an improvement on the sand bagging system would be necessary. Large water permeable casings would quickly be filled with a cement foam that would harden and increase its mass and weight as the water mixed with it. They could be put in place by bulldozers or by workers in exoskeleton suits.

Those are a few ideas.

 

Teachers Tax Free

Teachers should be allowed to live tax free. They are grossly under paid and it would be a well deserved perk of the position. There are those that would state that the tax revenue lost by such a move would be devastating. The taxation system is out dated as well as our current monetary system but those are topics for another day. The military are allowed tax advantages for protecting our borders and interests around the world. Teachers should be rewarded for building the foundation for our future by preparing and challenging young minds. Their focus should be on teaching rather than trying to make ends meet. While there is an income tax they shouldn't have to pay it. They shouldn't have to pay property taxes. They should be offered friendly financing for housing and transportation. This would help entice more people to the teaching field. Too many shy away just because of the monetary concerns. In return the teachers should be held to strict performance based standards. The United States has fallen far behind the rest of the world in too many subjects and it is our teachers that have to lead our children on the way back. 

Taming Hurricanes

Hurricanes are another force that have to be dealt with every year. My original idea that I started with a couple years ago centers around placing cooling grids in the oceans. With the global warming the rising ocean temperatures are the leading factor to feeding more frequent and more powerful hurricanes each year. I figured that a system of large buoys that housed solar powered cooling units which would have coils going into the water in four directions. A network of these buoys and coils would be placed as numerous grids in the hot spots where the storms normally generate from. It would have to be a large network which would have to be large to affect the vast amount of water. It will take a lot to change the temperature of that much water but if the surface temperature could be lowered a few degrees it would sap the power source of the storms.

Or it might be easier to attack the hurricane from above. I just started of thinking about this approach this week. One possibility would be to fit our satellites with sonic cannons and the sound waves would force the developing storm downward until it dissipates into the ocean water. Ideally the diameter of the sound pulse could be adjusted to account of various sized storms. We'll concentrate on the peaceful applications here. A possible approach that could be used now would be to detonate explosives above the storm. The force of the blast could have the same effects to force the storm downward. 

Those are a couple ideas.

Fighting Forest Fires

One of the most destructive forces today is forest fires. In the past month I've come up with two ideas for helping fight them. The second one actually came to me this week.

One way to put out a fire is to smother it. With a campfire if you do not have water available you smother it with dirt. Adapting that to a larger scale I figured that vehicles could be created that chew up the ground and propel it forward like a snow blower. Varying sized vehicles could be created to handle different terrains. Much larger vehicles could be used to attack the fire on flatter surfaces while smaller SUV type vehicles could take the fight on hills. An attachable unit that could be attached to the front of vehicles like snow plows could also be created but those likely won't have the power of those that are part of an actual vehicle. I could see a whole line of vehicles spewing soil several feet ahead as they smother the fire as they advance.

The other idea is to develop misting tankers. I know that misting vehicles do exist but they need to be adapted. A vehicle with a water tank which would feed large panels on each side that have hundreds of holes through which the water is expelled as a mist. The vehicle could be on a tracks like on a tank or bull dozer. Again different size vehicles could be made to handle different terrains.

These two ideas could be used in conjunction with current methods to help speed the ability to get the fires under control and put them out. Damage would be minimized and more nature and property would be saved.

Those are two ideas.

intro and power source

The purpose of this blog is to have a platform to express my thoughts and ideas that really aren't suited for my other blogs. Some of these ideas are my attempt to think outside the so-call box while trying to come up with a solution to problems. That sort of thought process has been used from Leonardo da Vinci to Jules Verne to come up with ideas that may be ahead of their time. I don't believe there is no such thing as an original idea but it is possible for people to reach those ideas independently. That was the mind set that helped when I wrote my science fiction book Time of Knight. It took some time between putting pen to paper and finally publishing in 2008. Over the years I've seen some of my ideas develop in the real world such as e readers  use of stem cells, and 3D medical imaging. Those are the type of ideas I'll express here and possibly will lay the foundation for some one else to build on. In some ways this blog will be a means to channel my inner mad scientist.

In that vein I'll start with one idea which I approached in my book: the use of radiation as a power source. The book takes place forty years from now and the characters were only starting to research the possibility. Yet I think we could be ahead of that pace if efforts are made to explore this possibility. The use of radiation or specifically radioactive material would be tapping an nearly inexhaustible resource. There are obvious dangers but this material has already been produced in mass quantities as waste in our nuclear power plants. 

The fact that the radiation can be measured as it moves a needle on a geiger counter hints that an adaption could be made to start a chain reaction. Whether the moving needle remains part of the process or is replaced by another mechanism remains to be seen. I envision spinning gyros that could be in an infinite chain producing kinetic energy. One major issue would be containment. It may turn out that a little material goes a long way and the containment units for the initial part of the reaction may not have to be that large. There is enough existing material already that the current nuclear power plants are unnecessary and could be converted. 

That's one thought.