Steve's Favorite Inventions

Hi everybody! Welcome to a new feature in my blog called: "Steve's Favorite Inventions." Every so often (which I will loosely define as anywhere between a 2 day to 12 month period), I will cover one or more of my favorite inventions in the world. Because there are SO many inventions, you will know that the ones that are covered here are TRULY the cream of the crop. In fact, if you see something covered in this series of articles, you should get yourself one immediately.

Without further adieu...

ONE OF MY FAVORITE INVENTIONS IS:


Yes. The Swiffer Duster. These things are BAD ASS. Powered by equal parts science, voodoo, and components of basic to advanced black magic, one can effortlessly drag this along surfaces and they will be dust-free in one pass. I used to use a wet rag to dust, but it just wasn't as effective- I mean, yes, it picks up the dust... But eventually you reach a point where the rag is more or less saturated with dust. The Swiffer somehow accumulates more and more dust, yet leaves none behind.

It kind of reminds me of this science trick my buddy and I used to do back in the day. We would go around to elementary schools and teach ULTRA-basic chemistry. One of our staples was that we would bring in large bags of styrofoam peanuts and some acetone. We would then give each group of 4- 1st graders a plastic cup, and a bag of styrofoam peanuts, and bet them that we could fit more styrofoam peanuts into OUR cup than they could fit into theirs. We typically bet whatever was in our wallets- between us, about $50 (we were in high school at the time... definitely not high-rollers yet). Anyway, what the first graders didn't know is that our cup had a good two inches of acetone in it which would dissolve the styrofoam peanuts. SO, after about the 200th peanut, the kids were baffled and in complete awe of our power. We then explained what was really going on and the whole class instantly joined forces to demand the money in our wallets because "YOU CHEATED!!!!!!!!"

Where I was going with this is that the Swiffer Duster does the same things as the acetone! It EATS dust! It feeds off of it and grows stronger through its consumption. Truly amazing.

What I haven't told a lot of people, is that for the past year, I have been secretly trying to develop the formula behind whatever compound is in the Swiffer Duster's cotton-candy-ish makeup. Just recently, I finally realized it what it was. It is now presented here for all of humanity to see and to use in their own battles against dust bunnies: