Episode 5 My Genius Idea

Hi, and welcome to My Genius Idea, the series looking for the biggest,

best and brightest ideas from all of you.

In My Genius Idea, we're looking for the next generation of inventors.

We received ideas from all over the UK.

Your genius ideas ranged from how to look after your pets,

robots to help around the home,

through to flying cars and eco-powered planes.

Only 18 ideas made it to the heats.

And they'll now go head-to-head to see who'll be crowned

the overall winner.

Our budding inventors will work with experts

to help their inventions come to life,

and they'll go to of some of the UK's most successful organisations

to give them the inspiration to progress their inventions further.

It's not easy to inspire what I did.

Deciding if they can progress in the competition will be down to expert

inventor and judge, Tom Lawton.

Tom has always had a passion for inventing.

I love it. There are so many ideas all around us.

Under everybody's nose there's a solution that needs to be solved

or a problem that hasn't been addressed.

Tom started inventing when he was ten,

and by the time he was 21, he developed his first product,

the world's first recordable alarm clock.

You always have ideas, and being an inventor's about actually

seeing those ideas through into something that's real.

He's gone on to build a successful career as an inventor,

winning international awards for his work.

It's great doing a programme about young inventors,

because young inventors have a very fresh perception of the world,

and so I hope to be inspired by some of these young minds.

Hoping to impress Tom with their ideas today are Ben,

Jordan,

and Emily.

And here they are now. Welcome to the My Genius Idea Nerve Centre.

How are you all feeling? Nervous?

-Kind of.

-Kind of.

Ben, I'm going to come to you first. What's the genius idea?

To put magnetic repulsion in the bumpers of cars and hopefully,

when they go to crash, it'll stop them crashing.

Sports-mad Ben is on the ball.

He wants to make the road safer by fitting magnets to cars

to stop them crashing into each other.

How's that for a genius idea?

I like cars and stuff, and it was just one of the subjects I like,

so that's how I came up with it.

I think my idea's special cos it can save a lot of people's lives,

and it's not just helping someone to do chores or something.

So, Ben, do you think you've come up with the solution to car crashes?

No more car crashes, ever?

-Yeah.

-I like it.

-Hopefully.

Jordan, you next. Got competition in the hair stakes today.

Tell me about your idea.

My invention is an energy-saving road light.

Coach-crazy Jordan's idea is for eco-friendly street lights

that would automatically switch on and off

as cars and buses drive by them.

I think my idea's special because it'll help out the environment,

and it won't waste so much electricity as normal lampposts do.

So you want to go green?

-Yeah.

-Brilliant. I like it.

Emily, what's the genius idea?

My idea stops whales and dolphins swimming into dangerous waters.

So animal-loving Emily's idea is a device that will play the distress

call of a whale or dolphin to stop them swimming into dangerous waters.

I saw news reports on TV about the whales who swam into the oil slicks

and these ones in the River Thames,

and I thought that it needed to stop and we needed to help them.

In the My Genius Idea HQ, Ben, Jordan and Emily will each have

one hour to develop their idea with a top expert.

Ben's working on his idea

of magnetic car bumpers with Melanie Windridge.

What do you want to find out about today?

Well, hopefully learn a bit more about magnetics.

OK. Great. Well, today we've got some experiments that we're going to do

so we can learn a little bit about the forces between the magnets,

the polarity that we need,

maybe where you need to position them on the cars,

and we'll also have a look at electromagnetism.

Do you know much about the polarity of magnets?

-Look, this side, they're sticking, aren't they?

-Yeah.

What if we turn them round the other way?

So which way round do we want them?

-That way, so they don't.

-We want them so they're repelling.

-Yeah.

So with Ben knowing which way round the magnets should be,

he gets stuck into his next challenge,

working out where they need to be fitted on a car.

Meanwhile, could Jordan also be on the road to success

with his idea for energy saving road lights with David Gent,

a civil engineer?

OK. So do you want to tell me how this works?

As the vehicle goes past the sensor,

it'll turn on these lights,

and there'll be another sensor up the road,

and it'll turn the next set of lights on,

-and turn these off.

-OK. That's a really good idea.

There's technology that we use already

for controlling things like traffic lights.

Sometimes we have a sensor attached to the light,

which we could attach to the street light.

We could have things like a pressure pad here which turns the lights on.

And then another one here

which then turns these off and turns on the next set.

Another thing we could use is GPS. Do you know about GPS?

OK. So we have that in phones and things.

So if we have a satellite up in space telling the lights where the car is,

we can make sure there's lights on when a car goes past.

There are three possible ways to make Jordan's idea light up,

but which one will he choose?

And Emily's already hard at work explaining her idea

to marine biologist Jonathan Gordon.

My idea is a sonar device that

could help save the lives of dolphins and whales.

Right. So keeping them out of places where there might be danger,

is that the idea? I think that's a really good idea,

and there's a lot of really practical applications for that at the moment.

Yes, what we could do is just listen to some sounds.

We'll start with some of the sounds of the activities

which we think might be harmful to these animals

that your device could help to protect them from.

And one of those is pile drivers.

We're talking about big steel piles which are hammered into the ground

for things like wind turbines,

and this is what one of those sounds like when it's being hammered.

BANGING

And those bangs go on for an hour or two, and they're so loud

that they could actually damage the hearing of animals.

So there are these places,

if we could just keep them away for a short period of time,

then it would be really practically useful.

So, a good start for Emily. Straight away, she's found out

that there's a real need for her invention.

All our inventors have made a great start.

However, Ben's idea to put magnets on car bumpers

has hit a potential problem.

What if there were other metal things on the road, like, I don't know,

bicycles or watering cans or, I don't know, something on the road,

and your car's driving past, what's going to happen?

-It's going to gather it all up.

-It's picking it all up, isn't it?

So what could we do about this?

You could have a sensor turning it on or off.

So do you know of any magnets that we can turn on and off?

-Electric magnets?

-Electromagnets. OK. So you've heard of them?

-Yeah.

If you have a coil of wire like this,

and you put electricity through the coil of wire,

you actually get a magnetic field right through the middle,

so you can make magnetism by using electricity.

Jordan is now testing out one of the three ways

he could get his energy saving lights to work.

His first option is using pressure pads in the road.

OK. So the car comes down the road, hits the first sensor.

And turns a street light on.

And then as it continues down the road, hits the second sensor

and turns the light off, and will turn the next series of lights on.

Is there any alternative ways we could think about doing this?

Yeah. The alternative is we could put a sensor on the lamppost

instead of pressure pads,

because they can get worn out easy because of trucks and buses

and lots of cars going by every day.

So if you use sensors on top of lampposts,

it will be cheaper and they wouldn't get vandalised and worn out.

That's a really good idea.

Emily's idea for an underwater warning device

to keep sea mammals away from danger is taking shape.

She's now getting to grips with the best types of sounds to use.

Originally, her idea was to play sea mammal distress calls.

Distress calls might not be the best call,

because animals may come to try and help, or they may be curious.

Would it work if it was like a predator?

-That's a great idea.

-So you have a predator-like sound.

One of the biggest predators for marine mammals are killer whales,

so that would be a very good noise to start with.

Some of them eat fish and some of them eat marine mammals,

and they make quite different calls.

So this is the fish-eating whale.

WHALE CALL

And this is what the seal-eating ones sound like.

LOUDER WHALE CALL

They're quite different. To me, the second ones sound more frightening.

Yeah. More high-pitched.

And that would frighten me, too.

With only 20 minutes left,

I'm off to see how they're getting on.

First up, Ben and his unique road safety idea.

-How's it going?

-All right.

Are there any problems that we've found out?

-They'll pick up stuff if it's a permanent magnet.

-Of course.

So we'd get knives and forks flying out of windows,

and stuff being attached to the car which you don't want at all, do you?

So Ben still needs a way of controlling the magnets

if he's any chance of staying in the competition.

What problems, if any, has Jordan identified?

These are pressure pads,

but we can't use them cos they'll get worn out too easily.

So what are you going to use instead?

Sensors by the side of the road.

Brilliant. Dave, can this work?

Yeah. It can certainly work.

We've got technology like this in other applications,

and it's just taking that technology and applying it to this idea.

How does that sound, Jordan,

to hear somebody who knows tell you that your idea might actually

-be able to be made into a reality?

-It feels good.

-Wicked.

And what has Emily discovered that could help with her invention?

You're working with some hi-tech ideas here.

You know, have you brought it further along?

Well, we realised that the cry of distress probably wouldn't work,

so we'd have to do something like the predator's noise,

so they think there's a predator, but there's actually not.

If they think they're going to get eaten,

they're definitely not going in that area.

I think what's very clever about Emily's idea

is it's going to be a sound that animals already know about.

It means something to them.

-Yeah.

-So whether it was a distress call or a predator call,

it's something that they're going to respond to.

So, what does expert inventor and judge Tom make of the ideas so far?

There's some great original thinking, which is brilliant,

and a diverse set of ideas.

I do wonder about the practicality of some of them,

and obviously they're going to have to learn a lot from the experts

to work through whether these have got application in the real world.

One of the most ambitious inventions is Ben's idea.

Yeah. And of course, it's an obvious problem.

Anything we can do to improve road safety has to be worked towards,

so I'm going to have a look and have a chat to them,

and see how feasible it really is.

Tom will be judging all their ideas later on.

He'll want to know how well Ben, Jordan and Emily

have understood the technology behind their ideas,

and how well they can sell them to him.

Only one of today's inventors can win a place in the semi-finals.

..a hydrophone.

What are these devices here?

This looks like an interesting experiment going on.

I'm intrigued to know what your idea is.

I look forward to learning later. Thanks.

The guys are hard at work behind me

trying to understand some of the science and technology

it'll take to make their ideas happen,

and the great thing about science and technology

is that it's all around us in our everyday lives, even at play,

so we sent this lot off to visit one of the UK's leading theme parks.

Building bigger and faster roller coasters

needs cutting edge science and technology

to keep the ride on the track

and to keep the passengers safe at high speeds.

Keith Workman has just helped build one of the UK's newest rides.

My job is to pull the whole team together in designing the ride,

installing the ride, commissioning it, ready for the guest to go on.

The children today, I hope they'll get from seeing the rides

the collaboration between the creatives and the engineers

delivers these sort of magical experiences,

and the technology often makes that possible.

Jordan, Emily and Ben are on a VIP visit to go behind the scenes

to see how it all works.

It's a good place to learn about science

cos there's lots of things to learn about,

about all the rides, and it's a really fun place too.

Today I really want to learn how roller coasters work,

and experience what it's like on the roller coasters.

It's all, like, motor stuff,

and so I could learn a lot, and hopefully apply it to my invention.

People always want to go faster, more G-forces, more speed,

but the body can only take so much force,

so we have to be careful how we design things.

So, typical ride behind us here, there's about 4 to 4.5 G.

ROLLER COASTER ZOOMS PAST

So the way the coaster works, it's gone up the hill,

there's no engine on the train itself,

it's just driven to the top of the hill,

and from the top of the hill, it will change that potential energy,

which is the weight of the train,

into kinetic energy, the energy it needs to drive it around the track.

So the higher the hill is, or the heavier the train is,

those two combinations will make it go faster and further,

so if you've got a very high hill and a very heavy train,

you can have a nice long track, lots of run, and it will keep going.

When you look at the park, it looks, not science at all,

but when you actually learn about it,

you realise there's loads of science in it.

The art of building roller coasters

is done using computer software to simulate the ride.

Let's have a look at the first one.

So Jordan, Emily and Ben have been set a challenge,

to fix a design fault using the information Keith's just given them.

OK. Tell me what you think the problem is with that particular ride.

Is it because it hasn't got enough power so it can't go up the ramp?

It keeps coming down and back.

Good. We need enough energy from the lift hill

to get us around the rest of the track,

and as you rightly pointed out, the hill wasn't tall enough,

didn't have enough energy,

and therefore it couldn't get up the second hill.

Wouldn't be a very good ride. Wouldn't get many people,

and they'd all be stuck waiting to get off.

So their reward for getting it right, a ride on the real thing.

It's a really exciting new ride, really popular,

70 kilometres an hour, and it's really pushing technology

in how we use the technology to give a great ride experience.

Whoa!

Oh, my God!

'I never really realised that there was so much fun behind science

'and science behind fun.'

My invention is to stop cars crashing,

and this does help me progress that idea in my head.

We're back in the My Genius Idea HQ, and with only ten minutes left,

Ben, Jordan and Emily

will have to make the most of their remaining time.

Ben's idea hit a slight problem earlier on,

but he's found a way round this by using an electromagnet.

This is our electromagnet, and when I turn it on it should be magnetised.

So do you want to hold this for me? Just hold it near to one of the ends.

It's not magnetic at the moment, is it? It's not sticking.

Right. Try and hold it still.

Shall we see what happens if I turn it on?

Can you see that? Can you pull it off now?

-It's stuck, isn't it?

-Yeah.

Now if I turn it off. There we go.

So hold it nearby again. Let's see if it can attract from there.

OK. So when do you think you'd want to turn it on and off?

Maybe you could turn it on when you've got up to a certain speed,

or maybe once you've got up to a certain distance.

-And it would stop you picking up stray objects along the road.

-Yeah.

In the earlier part of his session, Jordan decided against

using pressure pads in the roads as they would wear out.

He's now chosen to make his energy-saving street lights

work with movement sensors,

and he's come up with an eco-friendly way to power them.

We'll use solar panels.

Will soak up all the energy and store it during the day,

and when it's at night and the vehicle drives past the sensor,

it'll turn on the lights, and when it gets to the second sensor,

it'll turn the six before off, and it'll turn on the next six.

So we only have lights on when we need them,

and all the energy comes from the sun, so we're not paying for it.

Emily's progressed her idea too.

She's found out it'll work with lots of sea mammals,

not just dolphins and whales.

It'll also need to play predator rather than distress calls

to keep sea mammals away from danger.

In the last part of the development session,

she needs to find out a way to play the sounds.

How do you get the sound in the device in the sea

and keep it in the same place?

What we need is something like an underwater speaker,

in fact an underwater loudspeaker,

and this is exactly one of those.

It's waterproof, it can go into the sea,

and it can be driven by an amplifier.

Well, the good thing is that sound

transmits really well through the water,

and that's why marine mammals use sound so much.

Marine mammals have very good hearing underwater,

so we'd certainly expect them to be able to hear the right sort of sound

at ranges of several miles,

and that's quite far enough for this to be effective.

With time up, Emily has established the sound she needs

to keep sea mammals away from danger,

Ben has found out the correct magnets to use,

and Jordan has decided to use sensor technology

and solar power to make his lampposts work.

But who will impress Tom most

and win a place in the next stage of the competition?

All three of our budding inventors now have to pitch to Tom.

First up is Ben.

Tom is waiting for you in the presentation den,

so off you go. Good luck.

Ben's idea is to use magnets in car bumpers to reduce accidents.

Will Tom send him through to the next round,

or crashing out of the competition?

Hi, Ben. I'm really looking forward to learning

about your magnetic car bumpers. Can you explain the idea to me?

We have an electric magnet ring around the car

making a magnetic field

that can be turned on and off with sensors,

and manually when you're parking.

-OK.

-So when it goes to crash,

hopefully, the magnets will stop it crashing.

What do you think might happen if cars were travelling

at quite high speed?

Would there be enough energy in the magnetic bumpers

to stop them from crashing?

Definitely, but they might stop it but then it might go back as well,

and start going backwards.

But depending on how the idea develops, when they go to crash,

you could just use the magnets to literally stop it,

and then you can turn them off immediately,

and then have the brakes set automatically

so they stop the car so they don't go backwards.

So the magnetic bumpers are connected

with the actual brake system, so it actually slows the car down.

-Yeah.

-So this idea would rely on everybody having the same technology.

-Yeah.

-Right. OK.

-That's how... Just like air bags, so you have it in every car.

-OK.

You spent time with an expert.

Can you tell me what you learnt from your time with them?

I learnt it'll be better to use electric magnets

so you can turn it on and off,

instead of having, like, permanent magnets,

cos you might pick up bits of metal and stuff going down the road.

Well, I can see the problem you're trying to solve,

and you've certainly thought about a lot of the areas

that you've got to deal with in terms of the technology,

so thank you very much.

I wasn't really that nervous.

I feel it went great.

Emily's next to pitch, with her marine mammal protection system.

Will Tom be convinced

that she should go through to the semi-finals?

Hi, Emily. I'm really looking forward to learning about your idea.

Can you explain the idea to me?

It transmits a sound that a predator would make,

by transmitting it to tell and persuade the marine mammals

to turn around to safer waters.

And it's anchored down to the ground,

and it can be disguised as a pebble or shell or seaweed.

Where might you use this device, and why might you use it?

You could use it in places like just off the American coast,

where we've had the oil disaster.

-OK. In order to discourage the marine life from going there?

-Yeah.

-OK.

-And avoid them getting tangled up in, like, fishing nets.

Has the idea improved in any way

since you spent time with your expert?

I learnt that a distress cry wouldn't work.

You were originally going to use as the alarm sound,

you were going to use a distress cry from those particular animals. OK.

But after talking with Jonathan,

we decided to go for the killer whale's normal call.

And why the killer whale's normal call?

That's their main predator,

-and they're never going to like a predator.

-OK.

-They're going to take a dislike to them.

-OK.

If you get a regular sound, just a really random one,

-they won't know what it means or anything.

-Yeah.

But if you get one that actually means something to them,

-then they will respond to it.

-Yes. I think that's really clever.

Is there anything else you'd like to tell me?

-It was originally for dolphins and whales.

-Yeah.

But as dolphins and whales, there's two types of killer whales.

There's t he fish-eating killer whale,

-and there's the marine mammal killer whale.

-Yeah. OK.

So we decided that we could expand the choice to all marine mammals

-instead of just for the dolphins and whales.

-OK. OK.

I think you've done a brilliant presentation. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

With Emily's pitch over, it will be Jordan's turn next,

but which one of our budding inventors will be going through

to the all-important semi-finals?

Remember, Tom's not looking for a completely finished idea today.

He's looking for an idea that has the most potential.

He'll be judging them on the technologies they've mastered,

and how well they can sell their ideas.

I'm really looking forward to learning about your lampposts.

Could you explain the idea to me?

As a car goes past a sensor, it will turn on six lights,

and it will turn off the six road lights past.

And on the top of the lampposts, there'll be solar panels,

-and they will soak up energy during the day.

-Yeah.

And we're going to use LED lights,

which will save more energy than normal light bulbs.

OK. So these are a self-sufficient, renewable energy-powered

street lights that are activated when the car passes,

in little kind of waves,

and they turn off when there are no cars around.

-Yeah.

-So is this something that you'd see on all roads?

Mostly on motorways and country lanes,

because if it was on a normal street and there's pedestrians walking by,

it'll be pitch black for them and they won't be able to see.

OK. Has the idea improved in any way

since you spent time with your expert?

What we learnt is we shouldn't use pressure pads,

because they can get worn out too easily by buses and trucks

and cars going over them every night, and they can get worn out.

-We're going to put the sensors on top of the lampposts like that.

-OK.

How confident are you that the technology exists

to make this idea actually work?

I'm quite confident because they use sensors on traffic lights,

cos if there's nothing there the traffic lights will go red,

and then pedestrians can cross.

When a vehicle comes, they'll automatically turn green,

and the vehicle can keep going.

OK. So we've got the solar technology to power them,

we've got the LED technology for the lights,

we've got the sensor technology already.

So it's just really a clever combination of all of those factors,

and this idea could work. You've done a brilliant presentation,

and thank you very much, Jordan.

I thought it'd be a little bit tricky,

but it was easier than I thought.

So with the pitches over,

who's booked themselves a place in the next round?

Will it be Ben with his idea for magnetic car bumpers?

Emily and her device to protect marine mammals?

Or Jordan and his eco-friendly street lights?

Tom, three really different ideas today, but all with a good heart.

Oh, yeah. They're inspiring ideas.

We're looking at marine conservation, we're looking at saving energy,

and road traffic safety. So how can you not be impressed?

OK. Well, have you made a decision?

Yeah. It's been difficult, but I have.

Well, if you'd like to take a seat, I'll get our young inventors in.

It's crunch time. They've all spent time developing their ideas

and have pitched them to Tom,

but who has won that place in the semi-finals?

Come in, guys.

You've all done really well to get this far, but as you know,

only one person can go through to the next round, the semi-finals.

Tom HAS made a decision. So Tom, it's over to you.

Yeah. Three inspiring ideas.

Ben, I think it's great you're trying to improve road traffic safety,

but I'm struggling to see how the idea could work practically.

Emily, I think that you've had a great idea that's moved on very well

since you spent time with your expert,

but I feel there would be a lot of testing to make this work.

Jordan, you've presented a very feasible idea,

but I too am concerned about implementing this in the real world.

But I have made a decision,

and the inventor that I'm going to send through

to the semi-finals of My Genius Idea is...

Emily.

So, Emily wins with her marine mammal protection system.

You made it. How do you feel?

-Really good.

-Are you happy about that?

-Yeah.

And she's still in with a chance of winning My Genius Idea.

Next week, the last three budding inventors

will try and win the one remaining semi-final place.

Can any of them be as impressive as the ones we've seen today?

We'll find out next time on My Genius Idea.

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