Tips to INVENT!

With all the technologies and inventions around us today, it became challenging to think of something no one in the world thought of before. There are great scientists and inventors who have accomplished so much till you reach to a point where you say, whatever idea I come up with, someone must have thought of before.

This type of thinking will take you nowhere. There are numerous young high school students, and I've even heard of elementary students who have made their own share of inventions. Scientists and geniuses would find what they did easier to accomplish than it is to find something new that never occurred to anyone else's mind.

This post will not give you ideas on inventions to make, but it will give you a push to start thinking of new ideas and thoughts that only you can think of. It's all about being different, and thinking out of the box.

Tips on how to make an invention

Think of a problem you always complain from. Keep thinking about it, and try to find ways everywhere to find it. This is how Archimedes made his contribution to the world.
King Hiero ordered a gold crown. He gave the goldsmith the exact amount of gold to make it. Hiero received the crown, but he suspected that the goldsmith used less-expensive silver instead of gold. Then, he asked for Archimedes's help.
Archimedes had a problem, and he kept thinking about it hoping to find an answer. When he entered his bathtub to relax and think, the water rose. He then found the solution. The water displaced by him is related to his body's volume. The water displaced by a pure gold crown would be less than one of a gold-silver mix, even if they weigh the same. The goldsmith was proven to be a fraud, and was later brought to justice.
Inventions are usually new ideas to solve a current problem, or a method to make something better. Since you don't want to invent something useless that no one will care about (such as an easy way to stick your socks on your bedroom ceiling), you should try to think of what benefits you want to have that will lead you to think of an invention.
I remember when I was in 10th grade; I used to write down to-do lists. The problem was that when I write something I'm supposed to do in our first recess in school, I forget it. One of my chemistry periods that year followed the first recess, and I used to forget to revise the subject whenever we had a quiz. I took a small piece of a plastic sheet and made two holes at its ends. Then I used a ribbon to transform it into a bracelet. I used a whiteboard marker to write and erase my to-do lists easily, and keep them on my wrist all the time.

Wonder why. Keep asking yourself, why does this happen? How can I make it better? What can I add to it? If you keep wondering, you will keep your mind active and eventually reach to an idea.
Newton wondered why that apple knocked his head. Usually, apples fall down on people's heads, but no one asks why. Newton had an unusual mind. Alfred North Whitehead one said, “It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.”At Newton's time, no one wondered. So just try to wonder about things no one else wonders about!
If you ask yourself questions, your subconscious mind will look for answers. Our minds have a power we cannot even realize, and we don't even know how useful it can be. You should change yourself into a thinker, and one day, you will be an inventor.

Explore. Use building blocks, pieces of paper, and small items around you and try to use them in a different way.
In my personal opinion, I think that the one behind the famous cartoon, Tom & Jerry, is very creative. If you observe Jerry's style of life, you will find a lot of our usual items used in a different way. Jerry sleeps in a match box, and he uses matches as pieces of wood for the bed to stand. A piece of cheese, to Jerry, is a maze with Jerry inside. This type of thinking is required if we ever want to introduce something new and creative to the world.
From my personal experience, one of the things I came up with is to use magnets for working out. I was playing with two pieces of magnets, and then thought of the more powerful magnets. Stronger magnets will require more effort by me if I wanted to resist their repulsion, which could be a form of exercise. Then I proceeded to think of how this idea is better than usual methods for workouts. The point is, I tried to explore and get a useful idea from random exploring.
Think out of the box. The only way to come up with something no one else came up with before is to think in a way no one thought of before. Don't use the usual ways everyone else goes for. Think differently. Be wild. Be weird. Be special.
Everyone use pens on papers, sprays on walls, and chalks on sidewalks. What do what we write on have in common? They're all solid. Jets are different, using smoke to make shapes in the sky. We don't have to think the way everyone else thought of. What about liquid? Maybe there's a way to write on water's surface.
The method to achieve a goal is usually easier than coming up with the new idea you want to achieve. It's impossible to follow the steps to do something if you don't know what it is, but if you know what you have to do, finding and making the steps won't be that difficult, or at least not impossible.


The biggest invention isn't the biggest in size; it's the one with the most benefits. Big and complicated ideas for inventions are almost easier to come up with, but harder to achieve. Small and simple ideas for inventions are harder to come up with, but easier to achieve. In both cases, the goal is one; to make a useful contribution for which you'll efforts will be appreciated. Don't underestimate yourself; the world is waiting for you to give them something they never saw or imagined before!

12th Grade Math Project

My senior year's math project was about bacteria, and representing bacterial growth in functions. The teacher told us to make up the functions, and even though we didn't take transformations of functions (because of our AWESOME Saudi curriculum), but I did encounter them when I prepared for my SAT tests. I came up with the idea of making one graph that contains all the phases of bacterial growth, instead of what the others did. The girls at first made a graph for each phase separately, but then the teacher saw my work-in-progress and suggested to the others to follow suit. It's great that she was impressed but I actually thought that what I did was what's expected from us!
Dana Al Duwaihi and I did it. Dana worked on most (if not all) the biology part, since that's what she likes, and I focused on the math part.This is the presentation, colorful as usual. (May God help me get through college, I can't make formal, colorless presentations!!!!)

10th Grade Math Project

Samar Al-Qatari, Sulaf Al Saif, and Sara Al Falih worked with me in 10th grade on a project about elevation and depression angles. We were asked to make up questions and to simply be creative!

Creative.. You can never be too colorful!! <3

DAS Talent show!!

I'm going through my old documents to check out if there's anything worth posting on here.. and I found the rap song my friends and I presented in our school's first talent show! It was part of a mini-play where we were the geeks at first then two popular girls transformed us into popular girls like them, then we became as mean to them as they were to us, and the cycle goes on..


What you know about math
What you know about math
What you know about math
Hey, don’t you know I represent Math League
When I add shortly subtract
Freshmen backpack where I’m holding all my work at
What you know about math
What you know about math
What you know about math
I know all about math
Answers 44
It’s easy cuz of sig figs
You got 45, you rounded high
Your answers too big
don’t you know I represent Math League
When I add shortly subtract
Freshmen backpack where I’m holding all my work at
What you know about math
What you know about math
What you know about math
I know all about math


Memories..

Hydrocarbons Reactions

I made this back in 11th grade, and I didn't have a chance to present it, I know a lot might not benefit from it because it's in Arabic, but still, you can get the picture :)

We were supposed to make a "reaction scheme" for hydrocarbons, I don't really know what it's called in English :P

The "mystery compounds" are revealed in this image

This is how I intended to present and explain the reaction. I colored the small metal balls to represent oxygen, hydroxide, carbon, and halogen..

Ahmad Zuwail

Reading takes you to a world where only your imagination controls how you visualize what you read. Each person sees the words from a different perspective. The last book that really influenced me was Angels and Demons by Dan Brown. The way he wrote a novel mixed with laws of science and particle physics made me fall in love with reading again, after years of leaving my books on shelves. Since then, I started reading different types of books. The book in my hand now is "The Era of Knowledge", an Arabic book by the Nobel prize winner Ahmad Zuwail, who is as far as I know currently a professor of chemistry and physics at Caltech (teaching my favorite subjects at my top-choice college!).



When I started reading, I felt that the person I'm reading about is me, in a different setting and holding a different nationality. The curiosity and the way Ahmad Zuwail used to think in his early age resembles how I used to think. The subjects he likes are as same as mine. The way his parents brought him up with the belief that Islam is a reason to thrive in knowledge and science rather than to leave books for worship is the same way I was brought up. In Islam, anything good done with the intention of pleasing God is considered a form of worship. What fascinates me about that leader is that his leadership and uniqueness was apparent since he was young.

What really touched me is that when Dr. Ahmad climbed his first steps in Alexandria University he wondered if he can really be one of those great scientists that brought something new to the world. He read about successful brilliant contributors to science and scientists thinking that the only way to be a great scientist is to read and know about others and follow their trail.

I wonder, if I read about you Dr. Zuwail, and if I read more about Newton, Einstein, Faraday, and all those great idols, will I ever be one? You and I wondered about the same thing, but you're already there, and I'm not. You are living my dream. I am connected to this book and I hope that as long as my past is written in this book, my future is also going to follow the same path that the book talks about.

I don't care about getting into Caltech as much as I care about being good enough to get into one of the best universities in the world and to succeed in it. I don't care about winning a Nobel prize as much as I care about making contributions and achievements worth winning one. I don't care about others writing books about me as much as I care about having an influence on them. I do want to achieve what I mentioned but for a meaning beyond just simply "achieving those goals," but I'm aiming at what they symbolize and what they stand for.

I'm still at the beginning of the book, and the start of my life. What is about to happen is already written for me, and I pray God that what he wrote for me is better than what's written in "The Era of Knowledge."

Re-NEW-ABLE Energy resources..

RE-NEW-ABLE energy resources, sources of energy that are ABLE to be RE-NEWed. What are we waiting for then?
Ok, so what if I'm against people who play with their food, even if it's on a very large scale (like the ones using corn as biofuel).. African countries are starving to death, and countries like the United States are using corn as an alternative to gasoline.... Not only that, every source of enery has its cons, but should that mean that we give up them all? The most fuels with negative points are fossil fuels.... with all their emissions and "mortality" because we're running out of them.. So, what to do??

I call researchers, engineers, and all the ones who have the power to make a difference in the renewable energy resources technology to develop and improve them in order to lessen the obstacles built right in front of them..

Just one thing.. I'd prefer Arabs are the ones who make the breakthroughs in these feilds.. (l0l).. we don't want our gas to be worth nothing one day, so if we were in charge of developing renewable energy resources........ we would have something other than oil to rely on economically..

Good luck everyone!

Made in Saudi

How do we define our economy? How are we building our economy? How did we become a rich country? Oil. A short and efficient word that answers all these questions..

We are a country that depends on imports, and never depends on itself. When we take a look at our wealth, it's because of something we didn't work for or produce. It's because of the resources we're lucky to have. Well, I'm not willing to take our black gold for granted.

As Ahmad Al-Shugairy said today (25th August, 2009), Japanese people are not smarter than Arabs. Arabs have the potential and the capability, but we're not using our minds. We can develop ourselves, and become more technologically advanced.

If we ask ourselves how the east and the west are very successful, it's because of how wise they were when it came to utilizing their minds. They've depended on the science and knowledge that the Muslims have discovered before to reach far beyond what we have reached. Now, it's our time to contribute to the world by depending on the knowledge others have reached to benefit all.

I promise myself to try my best. "Verily never will Allah change the condition of a people until they change it themselves (with their own souls)."
(إن الله لا يغير ما بقوم حتى يغيروا ما بأنفسهم)
Hopefully you will too :)

It's Seeping through your Clothes!

Your shoes, your clothes, your pens, your notebooks, even your food are infected with a deadly disease. Wear your shoes too long and you might end up getting infected with it. What is it, you might ask? Is it deadly? Yes it is! It is so deadly that its effects are not apparent only after decades. What is it, maybe we can help get rid of it, cure those infected with it? No you can't! Unless you have the will power of 6 billion people on planet Earth. It's everywhere. Every thing you see is infected with it, you might be sitting on it right this moment. You can't hide from it, you just can't.
 Ok I think I can take it, just tell me what it is! Fine it is the evil material we all well know as plastic. Plastic?! That's the disease you were talking about? Plastic isn't evil, it's the best material to human kind. That's what it wants you to think. It seeps into your clothes and your everyday lives making you think that you can't live without it. Then when you are addicted to it, it strikes its deadly stroke. What is going to do? It will kill millions of animals by invading their digestive systems, because animals were too naive to know that it isn’t food. Then it will it reproduce in massive numbers making humans trying to get rid of it anywhere, but the increase in the population will lead to throwing it out in the ocean. The ocean is huge; nothing will happen if we throw a few plastic bottles in it? What?! What about the fish and living creatures they will end up infected with it eventually. Who cares about fish? Don’t you love eating that creamy grilled fish fillet every weekend? Oh, never mind. Then after that humans will try to recycle plastic, but what they don’t know is that it will only make it stronger. Recycling may seem as a good idea, but it will only make them more addicted to it, because recycling just means wasting money, and making them think that they can't live without it. Then as everyone becomes addicted, the world will start to get hotter and hotter. That’s ok, I like the summer. Do you like that this so called summer will eventually melt the ice caps and boil oceans and erupt volcanoes? Plastic has deadly gases in it that emit every time we make it or recycle it. These gasses seep into the air and captivate the sun's rays making the world hotter. Some kinds of plastic even use CFCs in them. Wait, what are CFCs, and there are more kinds of plastic?! Yes, there are a myriad of kinds all eviler than the other. There is PET that we use in water bottles, and PS that we use in burger containers, PP that we find in food containers, and PVC that we find in our curtains. It's everywhere! Yes it is! As I was saying PS uses CFCs, or chlorofluorocarbons that when emitted creep up to the ozone layer and slowly gets rid of it. But how? The ozone layer is made up of O3, when CFCs comes around it turns it into O2, so basically deteriorating it. The ozone layer is responsible of blocking the sun's harmful rays from us. With no more ozone layer humans get infected with skin cancer and more. And there is nothing we can do about it.


But I'm sure we can think of something. The only thing we can do is stop using plastic, stop depending on it in everything we do and use, stop and look for alternatives, planet Earth is full of wondrous things we can use, yet we couldn’t find anything except oil! We can use bio-plastic, glass, or steel. Instead of using plastic bags, bring your own bag. Stop using plastic water bottles and buy a stainless steel one. If we can get 6 billion people to do that we can get our Earth back. The world will change, but the change starts with you.

Yours truley, Rowa, Mayadah, Fatima, and Maram...