Invention Commonalities

[Under development]

I thought it would be a good idea to discuss inventions and how we get them. So, as I sat thinking about inventing I looked up, "Wheel of Invention," and came across the following pages (on an exhibit from a few years ago) which you still may find interesting:

• General Introduction to Exhibit http://www.wheelofinvention.org/exhibition.htm
• Booklet in English (with photos and recent patents) http://www.wheelofinvention.org/WOI-EN-WEB.pdf
• Wheel of Invention booklet in Dutch(pdf)

What commonalities exist among inventors? Do you think there is a special way that they think?
Compare and contrast your ideas with those found at: http://www.innovation-institute.com/IR_January_2001.htm or at http://www.nistep.go.jp/achiev/abs/eng/mat154e/pdf/mat154ae.pdf.

What do you think about this invention? How would you rate it? What about this one? Can you compare and contrast the two inventions? Do you think the inventors had any similar traits? What do you think was similar? Different?

An opinion presented on eHow says inventing is easy. Do you agree or disagree? Why/why not?

Do you think more children or more adults would think inventing is easy? Support your opinion.

The US Patent Office link is here. There is more information at the link about inventing.

Inventor Resources

Are you an inventor? Are science and math helpful to the invention process? If you met an inventor, what would you like to know?

Wikipedia Links on Engineering Design Process

• 1 Identifying a Need
• 2 Defining the Problem
• 3 Conducting Research
• 4 Narrowing the Research
• 5 Analyzing set criteria
• 6 Finding alternative solutions
• 7 Analyzing possible solutions
• 8 Making a decision
• 9 Presenting the product
• 10 Communicating and selling the product
• 11 See also
• 12 References

Other resources:

MIT Open Courseware-Design Process

http://www.triz-journal.com/archives/1999/02/e/index.htm

David Lilja on Engineering Process (Teaching ideas)

Richard M. Felder

Prototypes in Design Process

Prototypes and Usability

Teaching about Design Process-Slide Set: https://www.cs.umd.edu/~atif/Teaching/Spring2003/Slides/11.pdf

http://www.catskillwebsitedesign.com/images/design-process.jpg

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