One cool idea

I thought of writing a post on the supposedly most private 6-page e-mail read by over a million (atleast) in full, but, it is very depressing to look at it from a personal perspective. So, I would rather write something else.

Once I visited 3M, Bangalore and it was quite an inspiring visit. I listened a lot on ‘ideas’ and how with apparently simple ideas some nobodies became millionaires. I thought, whether or not monetary, I can keep thinking of some ideas just for the kick of it. One such post was the “gym-workout”. Now, another ‘cool’ idea..

This is about the ice cubes that we often use. Their use? To cool drinks. If you want them to make the drinks cool fast, they should melt fast. If you want them to just keep floating around, you can make them melt slow. I am more interested in the first category, which would be useful for hot countries like India, where you want some rapid way to chill. I haven’t seen any other shaped ice cubes, and haven’t googled to find any such thing. This idea is atleast 6 years old.

Now, little bit about the science of melting. (If you don’t want to hear some science funda, plz. jump to the next para.) More the surface area of the solid ice, faster it would dissolve. So, for a given volume (and hence the weight) of ice, a spherical form has the lowest surface area. Next comes a cube, followed by rectangle, triangle, oval-shape, etc. If you make the surface very irregular, like a flat disk with lots of protrusions (imagine Vicks keech keech.. animated bacteria) but if it is too rough like that, it would tear the mouth.. So, ideally, you would like to have something optimum.

What stuck me as a simple design for fast melting was a smooth more-wavy pea-pod shaped blocks, or simply, even a simple oval shaped one. Apart from these, I can think of quite a few designs which would be quite interesting:

Heart – (Dialogue vudalam: Indha heart drinks-le karaiyara madhiri ennoda heart unnai parthadhum karaiyudhu)

Lips – (Drinks mele float pannittu irundha parka eppadi irukkum)

For the kids, fun to have some simple shapes which they love, such as a fish, boat and teddy.

All it requires is a suitable plastic mould of the desired shape.. must be a jujubi with the current technology.