Innocentive and Updates

Hi everyone! I hope your Thanksgiving break is going nicely.  Some updates: Erica, Karina, Fionn, and I recently submitted to the Conrad Spirit of Innovation Awards, and were chosen as semifinalists! Our project is a drug testing strip that can be dipped into drinks to avoid unwanted ingestion of drugs.  

As for the Innocentive, it's on making quieter trucks in a city environment.  https://www.innocentive.com/ar/challenge/9933270

How can we make trucks quieter?  Post ideas in the comments.

Enjoy the rest of break!

Another Innocentive

Hey everyone! I hope the first quarter went all right (alright? I can never remember) with you.  Here's a new Innocentive challenge to munch on: 

https://www.innocentive.com/ar/challenge/9933456

The goal is to develop an environmentally friendly grocery bag/transport method.  They're looking specifically for single use ones.  

Yes, there are existing solutions, but all of them can be improved.  For example, I'm pretty sure Whole Foods uses paper grocery bags instead of plastic.  However paper is not as strong as plastic, and when you make the paper thick enough to be as strong as plastic, it becomes a lot more expensive.

What do you guys think? Post ideas in the comments.

New Innocentive

Hey everyone! This week we've got a new challenge to think about.  This one is an open question so anything is welcome.

Reusing Cotton
How can we reuse cotton materials in an innovative way?  Cotton is a sustainable material except a lot of it is thrown away into landfills where they become useless.  Here's the link to the Innocentive page https://www.innocentive.com/ar/challenge/9933196

Comment: what do you think?

Something to think about

Hi guys! We've added a new gadget to the blog, so that you can subscribe to email notifications of new posts.  So everyone should go submit your email to the thing on the right hand side so you don't have to keep checking back for posts.

Here's something to mull over during your glorious four day weekend: Elon Musk, the guy behind SpaceX and a lot of other awesome things, publicized his plans for this strange thing called the Hyperloop in August.  Its purpose was to replace the high speed rail system that California was going to implement between San Francisco and LA.  It's a really radical design, involving a partial vacuum instead of a complete vacuum, and other really cool things.  The Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperloop  is pretty thorough but if you feel like sacrificing sleep for a technical report you can read this: http://www.teslamotors.com/sites/default/files/blog_images/hyperloop-alpha.pdf.

What do you guys think? Is it plausible? Does it actually solve the problem (what is the problem he's trying to solve?)? How can we improve it? Do you love it/hate it? 

Interest Meeting Recap

Hello everyone!
Thanks to everyone who came to the interest meeting! Sorry that it ran over, we hope you didn’t miss anything important. For those of you who couldn’t make it, here’s an overview about what we discussed:

Who we are: We are Hunter’s only club that focuses on inventing, and exploring solutions to real-world problems.  As you probably know, we’re completely online so you don’t have to take time out of your school day to visit our club. The admins of this site are Cheyenne (she was not at the interest meeting yesterday due to a commitment she couldn't get out of, but she’s awesome too!), Erica, and Karina.   

If it’s online… what’s the time commitment?: As much as you want it to be.  We’ll be posting Innocentive challenges for you to chew on each week (more about that later), and there might be time crushes around competition deadlines.  But your time commitment is really up to you-we don’t want to force you guys in any way to do anything you don’t want to.  However, if you do not post for one-two months, you will be automatically removed from the blogspot because we will assume you are not interested anymore. 

What do we actually do then?: Every week/two weeks, we’ll post Innocentive challenges from https://www.innocentive.com/ that we find interesting.  We’ll discuss these challenges in the comment boxes, and if there’s a feasible idea, we will assemble a taskforce to complete the necessary requirements for the challenge.
Also, we plan on submitting to many competitions this year. These include:
1.       Conrad Awards: http://www.conradawards.org/ - focused on creating an invention/prototype.  Note, this is due in less than 2 weeks so if you’re interested, you must form a group with some other people and think fast. If you have any questions, you can message any of the admins. 
2.       Siemens We Can Change the World: http://www.wecanchange.com/ - focused on environmental challenges .  Due later in the year, so it’ll be a separate discussion.
We will post more later, and if you find any others that you would like, feel free to share it with the group!

That’s pretty much all we discussed yesterday.  If you have any lingering questions, comment down below or message any of the admins. Our emails are:

Cheyenne- cheyennehua@gmail.com
Erica- elin6888@yahoo.com
Or Karina- karina.xie@gmail.com

Thanks!

Cheyenne, Erica and Karina

Welcome to Inventors Club!

Hi everyone! Welcome to Inventors Club's online discussion board.  Here is where we primarily discuss problems and think up solutions to them.  

We had a great year last year, submitting to the Spirit of Innovation Challenge (and getting to the semifinalist stage!). We're going to try to submit to slightly more competitions this year and it will definitely be more fun and awesome.  There will be more information at the interest meeting (room 210, Friday Activities October 11 [moved from the 4th due to the 7th grade picnic]).

We'd also like to welcome Mr. Randolph as the new advisor.  He leads Science Bowl, I-Help Liberia, and CSAW, all very successful organizations.  We're honored to have someone with his dedication, expertise, and overall awesomeness join the team this year.

One more important logistics point: in order to maintain the blog's activity and ensure that it will remain a place where great ideas are born, we will instate the following policy. If you do not post or comment in one month, you will be automatically removed from the blog.  This is just to make sure that all members are still reading the posts and are still interested in the club.

We're gonna have an amazing year!  Let's start by having y'all comment on this post to make sure everything is working properly.

Conrad Spirit of Innovation

Hi! As of August 30, the Conrad SOIC is now open! We have a little more than five weeks until Oct. 24, which means we should start brainstorming and drafting a short abstract. Last year, we posited a piezoelectric device as a means of green energy & reduction of subway noise, but we can go anywhere this year. We can stick in the same field (Energy & Environment), or we can delve into other areas of research (Aerospace and Aviation, Cybertechnology and Security, and Health and Nutrition). Regardless, I think a guiding prerequisite should be something that benefits New York City at large and at the same time has global applications. :D

- Karina Xie