AN INVENTION SCENARIO
The Case of the Chocolate
Wetsuit
Here is an invention scenario
that we can use to illustrate the prior art search process.
The
Scenario.
Imagine…you are a physicist and
a scuba diver. So one sunny day in Northern Minnesota in the late Fall you have
just donned 40 lbs of weight on top of heavy scuba equipment, in order to be
able to dive in a cold lake. The weight is needed because you have had to don a
dry suit (or thick wet suit) in order to be able to survive the cold
temperatures that you are about to enter. The weight is uncomfortable on top of
the 30 or so pounds that the tank and other gear weigh. As you jump into the
freezing water, you consider why you need to use so much weight, and realize
that if your protective garment were neutrally buoyant (instead of loaded with
air for insulation), you would not need to add so much
weight. In order to be less buoyant, all you need to do is find a way to
replace the air in the protective suit with some other, more
dense, insulating medium.
As you sink into the freezing
depths, you suddenly recall that the last time you ate a bar of chocolate, the
chocolate melted in your mouth at exactly the temperature of your body. As the
chocolate is mainly cocoa fat, you realize that it must be a fat that melts at
close to body temperature. Suddenly, somewhere in your neuronal circuits, the
inventive step is made. If your wet suit or dry suit were impregnated with
liquid cocoa fat, then during your dive, it would give up the latent heat of
energy that it possessed as a liquid, and as it solidified, it would give up
heat and keep you warm. You would therefore be able to significantly reduce the
amount of insulation, and hence lead weight, that you would need to dive with
in these cold conditions. Even if cocoa fat were not the right medium, there
must be a compound somewhere that has the thermal characteristics that would
work for this application.
Upon your return to
A laminated insulating material for divers’ wet suits
A layer consisting of a neoprene
foam that is in contact with the diver’s skin,
A second layer laminated to the first layer. This
layer is a film, containing cells in which is stored a reservoir of a material
that has a melting point that is in between the temperature of the diver’s body
and the temperature of the diving environment that the diver intends to enter,
and
A third layer which is laminated to
the second layer and provides a seal that protects the second layer against the
aqueous environment in which the diver is diving.
Based on this concept, and
obvious variants of it, what may the prior art look like?
Here is the search
report.