When they got engaged over winter break, UW-Madison student Kara Andersen promised her new fiance Tom Gerold that she wouldn't start planning the wedding right away.
They had an invention to finish first.
The decision paid off on Friday when their creation, an automated pesticide sprayer for fruit trees, won the $10,000 top Schoofs Prize for Creativity in the annual UW-Madison Innovation Day competition. In its 16th year, the contest rewards undergraduate students for creative, patentable inventions.
Among the other 22 inventions submitted in the contest: the CocoStove, a burner in a coconut for use in places such as rural Haiti, and BreezeDry, a towel bar with fans designed to dry clothes faster.
Past winners of the contest have gone on to great success. Matt Younkle won the Schoofs Prize in 1996 for the TurboTap, a way for vendors to pour beer faster with less waste. Now the TurboTap is used in about half of the major sports stadiums in the country, said Younkle, who was on campus Thursday to look at the inventions.
Part of the challenge is that the students need to build their inventions, not just imagine them.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Youthful enthusiasm! Creativity! Invention! It's UW-Madison's annual Innovation Day
Author: Deborah Ziff
