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Tornado in a Can
geyser writes "What stuff matters more than a device that can tear things apart? Frank Polifka has a patent on his Windhexe device that creates a tornado force wind. Besides pulverizing concrete, it can pulverize small objects including jelly fish, and chicken feet without destroying the organic compounds. The chickens don't like it. Is this really a prototype Quake weapon? I could only find newspaper articles about the device. Has anyone seen it in action and can you give us a first hand report?"
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" Whether there are vast riches to be made from pulverizing chicken poop or poultry parts into powder remains to be seen. The trick will be whether the machine can transform the various substances into products worth more than the processing costs."
Sounds like he's trying to kick up a real shitstorm.
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IDE hard drive!
(No, seriously. The warranties are for, like, 2 years now. They slowly spin themselves apart until the data is nonsense.)
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
I'm sure this is cool, but that doesn't exactly fill my heart with fear.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Finally! Something we can use to fight off Casanova Frankenstein and Captain Amazing! Was it designed by Dr. Heller?
"Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
With great tornado in a can comes great responsibility.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
It's for Apparatus and method for circular vortex air flow material grinding.
P TO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.h tml&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1=Polifka&OS=Poli fka&RS=Polifka
It's dated March 7, 2002 and the applicant is listed as Polifka, Francis D..
You can read it at http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
Sounds like a good way to reduce land fill space. Just pulverize everything to the molecular level shake and let settle.
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
somehow found their way to local trailer parks, resulting in total devastation when they were mistaken for cans of beer.
To test their theory, the Vortex folks have thrown in rocks, diapers, tomatoes, sweet potato rejects from the farm down the road, 400 pounds of Oreo cookies, frozen pizza dough, even a dead bird.
:(
Damn...what a waste of Oreo's
"Some fight for law. Some fight for justice. What will you fight for? One day, you will see."
So when a grain buyer came to Polifka and asked him to design a portable machine to mill grain, Polifka started tinkering around in his workshop on the farm. He has a high school diploma and a certificate from diesel engine school, but he's been dreaming up machines for most of his life. Over the years, he's invented everything from an industrial-strength mulcher to a vehicle to carry implements around the farm.
Even so, it took him 15 years to make a tornado in a can that he was satisfied with. And though physicists and engineers are at a loss as to how exactly it works, he's happy to explain how he made it.
It sounds like this guy is about as far removed from shedules and deadlines as anyone I have ever seen....
This again proves that it's not a degree or an education, but thinking outside the box that will move technology forward.
Fantasy remains a human right; we make in our measure and in our derivative mode... -- JRR Tolkien
I want a blamethrower.
"Each year, the U.S. poultry industry generates about 4 million tons of blood, feathers, heads, feet and entrails, including some 300,000 tons on the Delmarva Peninsula."
I thought they had this problem licked with the advent of the chicken McNugget."Running that material through a drier and then through Polifka's machine could produce a powder form of those poultry byproducts that could be sold as a flavoring"
Geek #1:"Mmmmm,these Gorditas are wonderful!!"Geek #2:"Yeah, but they could use a little more chicken back if you ask me."
Tornado in a can?
It looks to me like a tornado in a room. Judging by that picture, this will work great as a prototype Quake weapon. You just have to tell your enemy "OK, now sit right here under this blue cone looking thing, while I pulverize you".
Not exactly portable is it?
"A terrorist is someone who has a bomb but doesn't have an air force." -William Blum
I think I'll pass on the company pizza party.
The BOfH seats at his desk... Calmly plays another party of Quake... Someone rings the door bell.
Who's there? - says the BOfH with some irritation that someone messed with his chance to break his 1374th frag record.
Oh, this is department XXX. You have a problem, the network doesn't work.
Couldn't you say that by the phone?..
Oh, well. We could but it was busy and we thought it was a lot easier to talk to you directly...
Well, come in... - The BOfH presses the button and the door opens...
Ooops sorry what is this funny small dark room here?
Oh, well. That's a small hall to avoid noises and dust coming up here. We have some sensitive equipement here... Just close the outdoor so I can open the inner door...
Oh, cool. Yeah, you amy be right, you have quite a dusty corridor just outside, you kn.. BAHM! FRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!
A bunch of dust flows over the corridor, the BOfH calmly concludes: "No person, no problem... back to the game..."
Anyone else see this as Windh.exe?
Some nasty trojan that's a tornado for your HD?
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
Yes, some of us beat swords into plowshares, and others beat chicken poop into gold.
...
Running that material through a drier and then through Polifka's machine could produce a powder form of those poultry byproducts that could be sold as a flavoring or nutritious additive to pet foods or fertilizers, Winsness thought.
"The single most important quality of the tornado in a can is whatever goes into it comes out with its nutritional value," he said. "You can get four times the price of nonedible waste."
With the population growth being what it is and the cost of burial plots skyrocketing, how long before Soylent Green is a reality???
Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.
the real evil is not what people think - its how people think
From the patent:
;)
(b) a lower enclosure disposed below and in a tandem arrangement with said upper enclosure, said lower enclosure including a lower annular sidewall having a substantially inverted conical configuration and open upper and lower ends and defining a lower interior chamber, said lower annular sidewall of said lower enclosure being mounted at said open upper end thereof to said upper annular sidewall at said open lower end of said upper enclosure such that said lower annular sidewall and lower interior chamber of said lower enclosure are substantially continuous and in flow communication with said upper annular sidewall and upper interior chamber of said upper enclosure...
Ok, one, that's one sentence, and two, the word "said" appears there 11 times. I felt like I was listening to "Einstein on the beach" again.
But apart from that, it (and the rest of the patents) describes the thing, and it's not a tornado gun like most of y'all are hypothesizing. It's...well, it's basically a wind-powered coffee grinder - no blades, just wind. So you can forget about pointing it at someone and watching their molecules randomly rearrange themselves, k?
Triv
To get all over every side.
Thank you, I'll be here all week.
before reading the story, I was picturing chickens running away as their feet were pulverized by sadistic farmers with tornado guns. Glad to hear that's not the case!
Oh the power of google and the wayback machine combined!
Polifka's webpage for the Windhexe
Business Idea for the Tornado-in-a-can guy:
Does the thought of being burned like yesteryear's garbage after you die curl your toes?
With the new Tornadoom swirly treatment you can be pulverized into ashes without the messy, smoking, hellish addition of flame.
Remember the first time a bully flushed your head in the mens room in Jr. High? Well now you can go out in full geek colors. The Tornadoom is like a permanent swirly that lasts forever. Make your shame of the past an eternal badge of honor.
Reduce the cost of burial to your family. For only $12/hr in electrical costs, you can be ground into dry powder. You can then be used to fertalize the garden, be a pet-food additive, or achieve any one of several higher self-fulfilling goals.
When you go to your funeral director to plan for that ever-coming day of doom, ask for Tornadoom!
Things such as this are what the patent system was designed for. This is a legitimate 'new' device that performs a 'new' function that was previously unavailable - and it deserves a patent.
Of course, someone will hook it up to a computer and obtain a new patent for 'Method of using a tornado in a can with a computer'
Oh well, something may never change.
It does not matter what you do, it's wrong.
First of all, vortex technology is quite respectable nowadays. As well as the Dyson cleaner, which gets more effective with each generation, there is the work on vortex particulate removers for Diesel engines and powder paint shops. The basic principle seems to be that the air is made to spiral down the vortex chamber in ever narrowing circles. As it does so, its angular velocity increases so that particulates experience an increasing force which carries them to the vortex walls.
Now, in a conventional vortex cleaner, you want non-turbulent flow to keep those particles going in the right direction. But what if the flow becomes turbulent? As it breaks up you would have small localised regions of extremely high turbulence in an environment of increasing angular momentum - so that instead of having a turbulent flow of air scrubbing a single surface, you could have lots of small turbulent flows in three dimensions. That sounds like a pretty effective way of abrading things with a soft medium that would do what is claimed.
So why does the Post talk about scientists being baffled? Well, as a 2c worth, perhaps it's because they have to talk up the story and perhaps it's because the journo didn't know the difference between a vortex chamber and a plate of gefulte fish and wanted to report that everybody else stood around looking stupid too. (In view of the Dow Jones case decision in Australia perhaps I should add this is just my personal opinion, wild speculations, journalists are all genius saviours of mankind etc.)
Perhaps the next Dyson cleaner will not just pick up the dust but act as a dry waste disposal unit as well. Or perhaps not.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
A great way for the Children of the Corn to dispose of the bodies!
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what exactly is a cone-shaped cylinder? is it related to the pyramid-shaped cube?
you probably shouldn't have read this.
Not effective on road-runners.
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You mean chickenshit, don't you?
Sorry about that, here's a direct link to the site.
Besides pulverizing concrete, it can pulverize small objects including jelly fish, and chicken feet without destroying the organic compounds. The chickens don't like it.
What, the jellyfish do??
I make these: http://beatseqr.com
And you wonder what they put in your food.. Oh boy! a powdered chicken head and feet milkshake! And it's nutritious too!
You know some guy down at the sewer treatment plant is saying "hey Larry.. I'll bet I could convince someone that its food.."
I think it's about time I start shopping at the farmer's market...
Ya know, a friend of mine died of Jakob-Kreutzfeld disease not too long ago.
It's supposed that he got it from eating beef contaminated by BSE, Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, which is a prion disease spread through the industry practice of feeding butcher's waste to cattle.
Cannibalism is bad, people. Ref. Oliver Sach's description of diseases among the descendants of cannibals. It's an unhealthy feedback loop, that optimizes disease organisms.
So, the poultry farmers have already spread salmonella through the entire US chicken industry with their unsound practices, now they want to do it better, cheaper, faster.
So much for chicken soup as health food.
What a great way to get rid of dead bodies!
The most important thing any republican needs to know.
I just hope the dried meal they make from chicken parts isn't fed to other chickens (and hopefully they aren't doing the same with cows on the beef meal made - surely we learned that lesson - then again, look at everything else)...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Good luck to this guy with defending his patent. A cursory search found prior art here.
I'm thinking this thing would be a great replacement for the woodchipper..
It is quite simple
Haiku should not be funny
Try a Senryu
Put your old printed circuit boards in here and pulverize away! You could reclaim copper and gold EASILY from this contraption, and reduce the remainder to a fine powder. You could probably refine even that at a later point.
Think of it! Go down to the corner Tornado-in-a-can and feed it your old motherboard, monitor, TV, anything! Its a geek dream: pulverize something to tiny bits, recycle useable hardware, get some money back at the same time!
Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy, and taste good with ketchup.
Strange as it seems, I remember reading about a WWII German Aiti-Aircraft weapon that was strangely similar to this. Supposedly, it could generate vortecies powerful enough to make an aircraft uncontrollable in flight and in some cases break up. As I remember, it never had the range they wanted (tens, rather than thousands, of meters) and was never deployed operationally.
Looks like another 50-year-old technology has found a use doing something it wasn't originally designed for.
Never attribute to malice what can as easily be the result of incompetence...
The alternative is even more stifling.
The inventor - seeing that his invention could too easily be copied by a large multinational - decides not to risk money for nothing, but instead goes back to his real job, farming.
No invention. No innovation.
We see a lot of this kind of behavior in the software industry today. Microsoft has made such a business of stealing other people's useful ideas, there isn't much innovation left anymore - outside of the hundreds of freeware grad-student projects that makes up the backbone of Gnu/Open Source/Linux.
Now I am not defending the joke software patents have become either, where adding "...with a computer!" is considered "innovation" by our rubber stamp patent office. But some degree of protection is needed, including both a comment period and a looser pays system for claims.
Effectively the problem with patents is twofold:
1] It is too easy to get a bogus patent, with which you can bully people who don't have the legal resources to fight your ludicrous claim.
2] It is too easy for large companies to simply ignore small patents, knowing that judges are very reluctant to enforce the law against them (it's not just Microsoft that gets this kind of special treatment, Intel is famous for this).
So what your saying is, he doesn't actually create the tornadoes, he just happens to be close by when they strike naturally and then take credit for them? :-)
The plasma torch has a better potential of destroying
/ ar ticle2.html
dangerous compounds and generating energy at the
same time.
It's really interesting stuff.
http://gtalumni.org/StayInformed/magazine/sum02
Absolute statements are never true
Simply put, if it's broken down to the molecular level, a Prion will still get ya.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas