UNB display features student inventions
Rube Goldberg would be right at home at a display at U.N.B. Professor Marwan Hassan has been collecting problems from the public and turning them over to his students for solutions. They've come up with some unusual inventions.
Someone told him it was tricky to peel butternut squash so engineering students came up with a self adjusting squash peeler.
Another of the third year engineering student teams designed a device to crush pills and believe it could be marketable. Colin Murray says they're looking into a patent.
"We've specifically made this model for a nursing home in Minto. They had problems with repetitive stress-strain injuries in their nurses. They were going on sick leave. So with our design you can have the strength of a 250 pound football player from just an average size man or woman."
Daniel Hill of the Versa-skate team also hopes he'll be able to sell his new version of in-line roller blades.
"You can take the wheels off your in-line skates and bolt on our system and switch back so you don't have to buy a whole new skate," he says.
In Hill's case, necessity wasn't the mother of invention. The invention grew out of his own mother's necessity.
"She likes to in-line skate and the pavement's all cracked around here. And, hey, I can probably do something about that."The Versa-skate is still in the prototype stage so Hill hasn't let his mom try them out yet. The team still has some more crash testing to get through.