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This is Progress? Waking Up To Math Problems |
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Dr. Samuel Says -
Smart Design
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Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
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Tuesday, 26 February 2008 |
Now, this is just plain evil. News of a crazy DIY alarm clock has been orbiting the blogosphere, and I thought for sure it was a hoax. Not so. The Turing Alarm Clock -- a prototype invention from math geek and enterprising young person Nick Johnson -- functions like a regular alarm clock, with one small but critical design adjustment. Once the alarm starts squealing, you can't turn it off unless you answer a series of fairly difficult arithmetic questions.
Brilliant design or malevolent misanthropism? Probably both. Here's the
story of the gadget's inspiration, in the words of its creator:
This is an old invention of mine. I had trouble waking up for work, and
traditional alarm clocks didn't seem to help. I learned to hit the
snooze or off buttons in my sleep. The problem was that alarms are too
easy to turn off, and so I set forth to create an alarm clock that
challenges me to prove that I am awake.
How should it challenge me? Well, I'm from a math background, so the
natural choice is with arithmatic. A problem like 23*17 + 6 will keep
me thinking for at least 20 seconds; if the alarm clock makes me solve
five in a row, then it can be sure I'm awake. There's no way I can
learn to do this in my sleep.
Now, I'm a fairly industrious fellow, but even I am in awe of the
diligence on display here. Mr. Johnson cobbled together his invention
with cheap LEDs and processors, and even created a few YouTube videos
to showcase his idea. What's more, he has made the source code public,
and published schematics and board outlines online. Will an
enterprising manufacturer take him up on the offer? Time will tell.
He's probably got a market out there -- the bleary-eyed undergrads at
MIT, if no one else. If I've learned one thing about math majors, it's
that you can't tell what they're liable to buy. Or invent.
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