Example 1 of creative thinking: The emergence of roller skates?
There was a clerk named Jim in the UK who sat in the office copying things all day long and was often so tired that his back ached. His best way to relieve fatigue is to go skating after work. In the winter it was easy to find a place to skate outside, but in other seasons Jim had no chance to skate. How can you skate in other seasons like you do in winter? Jim, who has a special liking for skating, has been thinking about this problem. After much thought, he thought of shoes on his feet and wheels that could glide. Jim put the images of these two things together in his mind and imagined a "sliding shoe." After repeated designs and experiments, he finally made "roller skates" that can be used in all seasons. The method of combinatorial imagination thinking refers to extracting some of their components or factors from certain objectively existing images of things in the mind, making certain changes as needed, and then using these extracted parts or factors to form their own structure. , the image of a specific thing that can exist independently with its properties, functions and characteristics.
Example 2 of creative thinking: Monk Huaibing fished for iron ox
In 1066 AD, during the reign of Yingzong of the Song Dynasty in my country, the Yellow River flooded and destroyed Hezhong Mansion (now Yongji County, Shanxi Province). ) A pontoon bridge outside the city washed eight iron oxen each weighing 10,000 kilograms used to tie the iron bridge on both sides into the river. After the flood receded, these eight iron bulls needed to be salvaged in order to rebuild the pontoon bridge. It was an extremely difficult thing to do at the time, so the government posted a recruitment list for this purpose. Later, a monk named Huai Bing unveiled the recruitment list. After some investigation and repeated thinking, Huai Bing directed a group of boatmen to finally fish all eight big iron oxen ashore. The method proposed by Huai Bing was that on the day of salvage, he directed a group of boatmen to fill the two large boats with sediment and bring them side by side; at the same time, a connecting frame was built between the two boats. After the boat reached the place where the Iron Ox sank, he asked someone to dive underwater and tie the other end of the rope tied to the wooden frame tightly to the Iron Ox. Then, while the boatman on the boat tightened the rope on the wooden frame, he shoveled the mud and sand in the boat into the river. As the sediment in the boat continues to decrease, the hull floats upward bit by bit. When the buoyancy of the ship exceeded the weight of the hull and the iron ox, the iron ox that was stuck in the sand gradually floated up. At this time, by rowing the boat, the iron ox can be easily pulled to the river and ashore. This was repeated 8 times, and finally all 8 big iron oxen were salvaged to the shore. Huai Bing's conception of the salvage scenario used the innovative thinking method of predictive imagination of image thinking.
Example 3 of creative thinking: The emergence of multi-purpose strollers
A children's product manufacturer accidentally saw a parent holding a child in one hand and struggling to hold a tricycle in the other. He guessed that this happened because the child was tired from riding and needed an adult to hold him. The manufacturer thought that if he designed a multi-purpose stroller, parents would not have to suffer this burden. He first imagined combining a sit-down stroller and a three-wheeled stroller, and adding a push handle to the back of the small three-wheeled stroller. Later, he thought of adding a connecting device to hang the stroller on a bicycle as a mother-child carriage; then he thought of adding a rocking part to make it an easy chair; and if a handle was installed on the front, it could also be used as a mother-child stroller. Ride as a wooden horse. After these continuous combinations of imagination, he designed a unique "multi-purpose stroller". According to the need to understand and transform the objective world, people can form new connections with existing things through combined imagination, and can form images of things they have never seen or heard of. The combinatorial imagination thinking method plays a huge role in people's innovative activities in all aspects.
Example 4 of creative thinking: The birth of the "Hydrophagograph"
In the past, doctors used a stethoscope to listen to the patient's swallowing of water in the lower part of the esophagus to diagnose whether a patient had cardiac cancer. The sound coming from the cardia can be used to determine whether there is cancer in the esophagus. With this diagnostic method, different doctors often make different judgments due to differences in hearing and resolution abilities, which can lead to serious misdiagnosis.
In order to improve the accuracy of diagnosis, two doctors from Shandong Medical College asked the Department of Electronics of Shandong University for help, hoping to develop an instrument that can pattern the acoustic signals of patients swallowing water. After accepting this task, several scientific researchers from Shandong University decomposed the goals into three functional blocks: recording, sound conversion and hot pen tracing. There are readily available magnetic recording technologies for audio recording, and there are also readily available technologies for voice conversion and hot pen tracing. Through imagination, they used magnetic recording technology and the method of fast recording and slow playback to change the 1000 Hz audio signal into 100 Hz. They used an acoustic-electric conversion device to change the sound signal of swallowing water into an electrical signal, and then used the hot pen on the cardiograph to Draw a sound picture. In this way, according to the established goals, existing technologies such as magnetic recording, acoustic and electrical conversion, and thermal pen tracing were reassembled and equipped, and the "water-swallowing phonograph" was invented. It not only obtained the national new invention patent, but also won the gold medal at the 14th Geneva International Invention Fair. Therefore, Einstein said: "A person who finds a new combination of known equipment is an inventor."
Example 5 of creative thinking: Synchronized flag-raising rope with national anthem music
Now Many units often raise the national flag, especially primary and secondary schools, which hold a national flag-raising ceremony every Monday morning with the participation of all teachers and students. During the flag-raising ceremony, the flag is usually raised slowly while the national anthem is sung or played. Once the flag reaches the top of the flagpole, the national anthem ends. This is of course the most ideal situation. However, this situation does not happen often. Usually, the flag reaches the top before the national anthem is played or sung, or the national anthem is played or sung before the flag reaches the top. This problem can obviously be solved by designing special electric control equipment, but this requires a lot of trouble and a lot of money, so it is generally considered unnecessary. A 14-year-old classmate from Chengdu No. 24 Middle School in Sichuan Province used his brains on the rope of the flagpole and came up with a good way to solve the problem and save trouble and money. He imagined how to solve this problem: If you set some intervals on the flag rope according to the melody and rhythm of the national anthem, and then fill in corresponding lyrics in each interval, when the flag is raised, you can pull the rope while looking at the flag rope. lyrics, so that the flag-raising and the singing of the national anthem can be synchronized. He thought about this problem using the innovative thinking method of predictive imagination in image thinking. The method that this classmate came up with is relatively simple, but it doesn't mean that it can be figured out with just a few clicks of the brain. He first repeatedly imagined in his mind how to make the speed and rhythm of raising the flag correspond to the speed and rhythm of singing and singing the national anthem, so that the two can be synchronized. Then he found some small plastic beads, wrote certain lyrics on each plastic bead, and then strung them on the flag rope at certain intervals. After adjusting the spacing of the plastic beads several times and conducting repeated experiments, he finally made this kind of flag-raising rope that "synchronizes with the music of the national anthem." At present, it has been adopted by manufacturers and produced standard products.