A group of 6th class students from Scoil Naomh Iosaf, Baltinglass, Co Wicklow have been announced as the overall Junior Inventor winners 2011 for their invention ‘Cinema Seat Availibility’.
It’s a lighting system for cinemas that makes it easier to find a seat in the dark. When the seat is not in use and is upright there would be a light on this part of the chair, which would be green to indicate that it is free.
If the seat is then in use and the occupant temporarily leaves, the seat will show red for a period of ten minutes. After this time it would change to green to indicate that the seat is available again.
An initiative of the Patents Office, the Junior Inventor competition is aimed at Primary School students to encourage them to be innovative and creative in finding solutions to everyday problems.
Clever alarm and sensor ideas
The winner of the 1st to 3rd class category was Eimhin O’Neill from St Anne’s NS, Straffan, Co Kildare with ‘The Phone Smoke Alarm’, a smoke alarm built into a mobile phone, as most people use mobile phones as alarm clocks and most house fires happen at night when people are asleep.
Another interesting winner was Aaron Farrell from Fermoyle NS, Lanesboro, Co Longford with his ‘Disabled Parking Sensor’, a chip that would be incorporated into disabled parking stickers and would be picked up by a sensor in disabled parking signs in car parks.
If a car doesn’t have a sticker with a sensor when parking in an allotted space an alarm will sound to warn the person they are parking in a disabled space.
This is the fourth year of the competition and the interest has grown each year to the extent that there were over 2,500 entries from 234 schools in 25 different counties this year.
Article courtesy of Bizstartup.ie
