By Austin Dave/SCVNEWS.com
Fourth grade students at Oak Hills Elementary in Westridge are keeping the United States Patent Office busy Tuesday, as they held their spring Invention Convention.
More than 100 students have been engaged in developing, building and demonstrating contraptions of all shapes and sizes over the last several weeks, to be judged by a variety of community members.
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Competitors turned in an autobiography, an explanation of what they invented as well as an application for a patent.
Inventions ran the gamut from sweeter-than-normal “Sweet Soda Pop” to combination fan, spoon and fork “Spork-a-Fan” to “Non-rippable Paper.”
Fourth grade student Natalie Lopez demonstrated her glove-like gadget dubbed “Monkey Gloves,” a title related to the gloves’ ability to prevent blisters when climbing on the monkey bars during recess.
“They have a special grip for metal so you won’t slip or get blisters,” Lopez said.
Lopez plays on the metal equipment during recess, often finding her hands painfully blistered.
“I went home and told my mom that they should have monkey bar gloves to prevent blisters,” she said.
The fourth grader first acquired the solution to her problem after watching her mom use special gloves tailored to open metal jar lids.
The “Find Me Hat” is a gadget targeted toward the stay-at-home mom in need of a way to keep track of a rambunctious child: an average, everyday hat on one side and a marquee identifying the child wearing it on the other.
When asked about her invention, Tessa Scholz explained an ordeal involving her younger brother at a movie theater.
“We couldn’t find him for ten minutes,” Scholz said, “we were afraid he might have been kidnapped.”
Scholz designed the hat to keep her family safe and to make history didn’t repeat itself.
She displayed her motto, “So your child won’t get lost” prominently above her cardboard tri-fold display.