Invention Idea #1

My kids go to school and (probably) never wash their hands. I imagine 90% of the colds I get started their path to my nose on some doorknob there. How can we sterilize children more effectively?

I thought about blasting them with ultraviolet, but that leaves them leathery and tough. Good for character but hard to chew. How about just blasting doorknobs (and the like) with UV? How would you mount such a light to reach all the crevices? Well, you could make the knob out of glass and mount the light inside.

But it turns out you need a minutes-long exposure to kill bacteria with UV. And glass blocks it anyway. And even if it didn't, it would still be shining out into the room and eyes of students.

However, I just recently came up with another solution: Ultrasound. So a kid grabs a knob and leaves germs behind. He lets go. A sensor notes this and gives a brief blast of ultrasound, dismembering any organics. The next kid grabs and she doesn't pick up the nasties.

Google says this works, but talks about being immersed in liquid. Maybe that can be worked around. Or a gel coating on the knob. Or fill the school with water and equip the kids with scuba gear.

Light and Fluffy as a Kitten...Sprayed with Pam

I've heard this claim before: You don't really need to shampoo your hair. Your head chemistry will adjust if you stop stripping the natural oils from it.

OK, sure. However, in this article the author not only claims that his hair is "as light and fluffy as a kitten's coat" but he also gives the basic idea on how go about the experiment. So I decided to try it and compare my head to a hypothetical kitten.

Experimental Procedure

• The article author hedges about what exactly he's putting on his head. "No de-greasant" means what exactly? Are you still conditioning? Since the only thing I use is regular shampoo (i.e. liquid soap), I decided to just use plain water. Every morning I dunk my head in the shower and scrub it thoroughly with fingers and fingernails, but use "no de-greasant".
• I also vaguely remember some other claim about "redistributing oils", so I also combed.

Results after one week
My hair is definitely less greasy-seeming than I expected. I normally shampoo every other day and when I skip a soaping I definitely notice it. My hair feels clumpy and gross. Rinsing and combing seems to fix that so I don't really notice.

On the other hand, I wouldn't say my hair feels clean, either. If I run my hands through it they start feeling like I've been eating potato chips. OK, maybe not that bad, but I'm not squeaky clean. In fact, when I rinse in the morning I have to wash my hands with soap after.

When I started this post I thought he said to try it for a week, but now I see it says a "few weeks". OK, I can probably stick it out a little while longer. No one has commented on it, so I guess I'm not too awful to behold.