Invention #106 - Bicycle propelled lawn mower

For the last couple of days, I've been contemplating the future of bicycle propelled lawn mowers. Where is this interesting technology heading today? What is the market like? Could any of you see yourself on one of these 15 years from now?

You may have seen this image floating around in emails over the years:

I highly doubt this would work. For one thing, we all know that the angle of the lawnmower handle relative to the ground surface must be significantly lower than what is depicted in this image. Also, trying to make corners on this would be a chore. You would also begin spinning the back tire trying to keep the momentum up. It's funny how you can find so many examples of front-loaded bike mowers online! A ton of people have actually tried this. Here are some great examples:

This one is not a bike, but it's a similar concept:

What I find interesting is how few examples you find of people trying to pull the mower. I wonder why? You could set something up on a bike that replaces the back wheel instead of the front. I think there might be enough weight in the back to keep the blade engaged as well. After doing a little bit of research, I did find something that might be worth some further investigation. Here it is:

Brilliant.

Invention #105: Goods Chariot

I have recently been enjoying killing the grocery bird and the jogging bird with the same stone. In short, I find it useful to jog to the grocery store. It is a 4-mile trip to and from the nearest grocery store in our neighborhood. I tend to enjoy this most early in the morning before the sun comes up. There is a feeling you get of simple accomplishment when you succeed in such a task. However, some issues tend to diminish those nice feelings along the way. If you take an empty baby stroller to carry the food items home in, you get some strange looks from people - both as you run with an empty stroller on the way there and with milk jugs strapped in the harness on the way back.

I was thinking the other morning, "there must be a better way." Someone must have invented this by now. A little searching on the web left me with much to be desired. "There is the Chariot." you might say. Well, that is built to carry kids and comes along with a lot of accessories that I simply don't need. What I need is a light bin, like those plastic ones you see at Walmart on a two-wheel, aluminum chassis with a bar that extends up to one side of my trunk (torso). No need for two bars, no need for straps and pockets. Just need to put goods in the bin and jog home.

Someone needs to invent that. It would be me if I had the time.

Why balance side to side when you can work the forward-back?

In an effort to improve the flexibility of cycling on a regular bike, Michael Killian has invented a bicycle with a distinct twist, quite literally. The sideways bike allows the cyclist to travel sideways rather than straightforward with a more flexible and dynamic approach. All that is required by the cyclist is to convert the traditional left to right balance, to a more complicated front to back balance. All well in theory, but this change is more difficult to adapt to than one would think.

Invention No. 104 - Skate 'n Sail

The sail skateboard defeated me and my friends back in '92. It was a tough year on the inventing scene. It was the year we learned that with enough man-power and sweat-equity, we could change the world of teenage trasportation. The plan was assembled late on a wednesday evening just as wind began calling us in a blustery voice at the door. The beginning was a set of plans that still inspire me today. I found some galvanized tubing at Allied and we welded a sail frame together. We even hired some welders from Argentina for the job. Then we attached a sail and anchored the whole thing to a skateboard nice and snug. Below is a picture of what it looked like.














We found the wheels on the skateboard to be too wimpy and the bearings bound on us in mid flight! We switched the skateboard out for a wagon and lo! it worked better. So try a wagon, man!

Invention Idea #103 - Pedal Plow

As we come closer to snow fall this year, lets take a step back and consider for a moment the possibility of finally moving away from the old-fashioned snow shovel. "Snowblower!" you say? But I say NO!! Why does the combustion engine always have to equal the future? Let's move on! I propose a Mountain Bike mounted snow plow. Mountain bikes are beefy so use these. Road bikes under these circumstances are problematic. A couple of years ago I tried strapping a snow shovel to my bike and found that shear and moment forces on the handle were quite extreme. Those forces converted static energy to kinimatic energy and threw me into the snow bank. So, make sure you learn the physics of your system BEFORE you invent! That's what I always say!

Here is my summary of the physics laws governing snow removal: The snow exit speed, Vexit, of the snow is just tan(theta) times the speed of the plow divided by the radial vector speed of the pedals on your bike. The energy of the exiting snow is 0.5*msnow*Vexit^2. So the power required to plow the snow goes like tan(theta)2 and like the cube of the speed (as it should!). The tan(theta) assumption seems valid for snow that exits the plow in a laminar fashion. It is apparent that even a flat plate (i.e 90º half angle) will push snow out of the way but the mound of snow ahead of the plate forms some natural angle of shear to form power that is leveraged by the moment arm. Power baby! This is very important as you learn more about my idea.

Now, let's say we could harness this power and combine it with the joy of riding a bike. Every inventor's dream... Since this is such a good idea, I figure I may need to look at the competition out there.

First competitor: Push some complicated scooper rather than a shovel










Okay, this is really complicated and cool.

Second competitor: Drag a complicated scooper behind you.











Clearly, the tires will pack the snow and make things less efficient. But I can dig this.

Competitor No. 3 - Four-wheeled pedal scraper.



This takes the cake when it comes to complications, but the combination of the three competitors is nothing but green, green fodder for my invention upgrade.