When you walk into an elevator you probably step in, press the floor you want to go to, and face the doors. Some people may squeeze into a corner, stand right in front of the buttons, or even right in the middle anxiously waiting to get where they are going. In the 60s, a social experiment was done on Candid Camera that proved basic social norms could be reversed using group conformity.

Check out the following video of a similar experiment that shows pieces of the original one. Students from the University of South Florida recreated the experiment. Watch how unsuspecting elevator riders were easily tricked into an uncomfortable situation through the power of social pressure.

After watching the video, what do you think you would do? Every single person who was in the elevator faced the back just because everyone else did. In the original experiment you see one rider’s somewhat “suave” way of conforming to the other passengers by checking his watch. The college students very quickly turned around, as not to be different or seem “weird”. Their subconscious feeling of wanting to “fit in” took over and they gave into the social pressure.

This experiment proves a few things. 1) That people are incredibly awkward on elevators. Notice how no one says anything, they just turn around like the rest of the passengers. 2) People need to “fit in” and be like the rest of the group, even if it means breaking norms and doing something that is different from what they normally do. Next time you take a ride in an elevator face the back and see what happens!

With health care costs increasing, employers are offering incentives to employees who take better care of themselves. The incentives can be rewards for exercising or participating in health screenings. Points are earned in the incentives programs and they can be used to buy everything from electronics to clothes.

A survey taken last month of 800 large and mid-sized companies found that 83 percent offer incentives for participating in programs that promote healthy lifestyle choices. Almost two-thirds of the companies offer monetary incentives of between $50 and $ 500!

At Viva Health, a Birmingham area health insurance company, such programs have been in place for a while. One of their programs involves giving employees “chips” for taking the stairs instead of the elevator. Every month an employee could earn up to $13.90 by just taking the stairs at least twice every work day. One Viva Health Employee cashed in some of her chips to get her daughter a new iPod Touch 5.

The stair climbing program was the subject of a study by the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The study found that over six months the flights of stairs that 216 employees climbed increased from 5,070 to 38,900. The average number of flights climbed per day went up from 39 to 301.

One company, ChipRewards, works with companies across the country to develop and implement incentive programs in the workplace. The stair climbing program is tracked through key cards which each employee has to get in the stairwell. The key to the program’s successful is the ability to track the behavior. What’s even more interesting is the fact that most people use their chips to buy things for other people.

These types of health incentive programs are likely to become more prevalent as parts of the federal Affordable Care Act law kicks in. Starting in 2014, employers will be able to use up to 30 percent of a worker’s heath care premiums on incentive programs.

Malls, airports, and casinos are all places you have probably used an escalator. The moving staircase is an alternative to elevators and is something everyone knows how to use. Some step onto them and ride to the top or bottom, while some still walk to make the trip even faster. But where did the idea for the escalator come from?

A man from Massachusetts named Nathan Ames is credited with patenting the first escalator in 1859, despite the fact that no working model of his design was ever built. It wasn’t until 30 years later in 1889 that Leamon Souder patented his escalator-like device that used a series of steps and links jointed to each other to carry passengers between floors. However, just like Ames’ model, Souder’s was never built either. Souder would then create four more escalator-style patents, including two that were for a spiral moving staircase. Yet again, all of his detailed drawings would stay on paper and never constructed.

In 1892, Jesse Reno patented the “Endless Conveyor or Elevator,” and George Wheeler patented his ideas for a more recognizable moving staircase. Just as the inventors before them, neither were ever built. Three years later, Charles Seeberger began producing drawings for a form of moving staircase similar to the one Wheeler created. Seeberger’s design was much like the escalators that are used today, except they did not have the comb-style stairs for safety.

Seeberger would eventually buy out Wheeler’s patent in 1897 and incorporated his designs into his own. He would then join the Otis Elevator Company in 1899, who would build the first ever working moving staircase. The name “escalator” came from the Latin word “scala,” which means steps, and the word “elevator,” which Otis used for the name of their moving lift.

A Frenchman would invent a “step-less” escalator in 1898 that was used in London’s Harrods store. This escalator used a continuous leather belt made from many pieces linked together that traveled only in the upward direction. It was said that customers who were unnerved by the experience were revived with free smelling salts and cognac.

Otis owned the term escalator so in the first half of the twentieth century other manufacturers of similar products had to market them under different names. Other products were named “Motorstair,” “Electirc Stairway,” and “Moving Stairs.”

A Swiss company called Schindler introduced their first version of the escalator in the mid-1930s. Today, the Schindler Company is the largest maker of escalators and second largest maker of elevators in the world.

Today, there are escalators everywhere, and they are just a norm to people. Their convenience and ability to take people to other floors quickly without waiting have made them a very popular invention.

There are not many older homes that were designed to give longevity to its inhabitants. As a result, as people get older, they start to have trouble navigating their two-story homes with steep stairs and narrow doorways. Older homes often do not have the standard measurements that are used in newer homes today. However, with the help of a stairlift or residential elevator, it is possible to regain some of your mobility back and stay living in your home longer.

If the stairs in your home have become a major obstacle to reaching a bedroom or bathroom, take a ride on a stairlift or bypass the stairs altogether with a residential elevator.

Stairlifts

Stairlifts are an inexpensive and convenient way to be able to use the stairs in your home once again. With rechargeable batteries, comfortable seat and footrest, and smooth ride, a stairlift will make traveling between floors in your home a breeze. The price will depend on the model, length of track, and type of track. Some staircases take a turn before reaching the next floor and that will require a custom curved track. A stairlift with a curved track will increase the price, but will be well worth it. Many stairlifts will fold up when not in use, so it will not hinder the stairs from other people. The rechargeable batteries ensure that even in a power outage you can still operate your stair lift and will not get stuck.

Residential Elevators

A slightly more expensive alternative to the stairlift, the residential elevator will bypass the stairs altogether. There are many options when looking for a residential elevator for your home. There are elevators small enough to carry one person and some large enough to help someone in a wheelchair travel between floors. Some of the higher class residential elevators use hydraulic or cable driven drive systems. These elevators will have a higher price tag but are hidden away and are similar to commercial models. Pneumatic residential elevators are a more affordable model that uses vacuum technology. They are less intrusive on your home and require less installation, keeping the price low. A residential elevator gives you the freedom to travel between multiple floors in your home with ease. Regain your independence and mobility back with an elevator in your home.
Both stairlifts and residential elevators make it possible to grow old in your home. They will give you back your independence and mobility, so you do not have to move to a new home or assisted living facility.

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The hardest part about traveling to space is getting up out of Earth’s gravity well. Once you get past the gravity well, space is yours to travel. The way we travel to space today is somewhat a primitive technology that will never allow for cheap passage to space. If a similar system to an elevator climbing up a wire was created, easy space access could be possible.

Using rockets to get astronauts to space is an effective way to reach space, however it is extremely expensive. If that is our only method of space travel, only the rich would ever be able to afford it. If we want space travel to become an everyday and inexpensive thing, other methods must be explored.

One idea is to deliver an asteroid into Earth’s orbit and drop a wire down from it. Then you could climb the wire just like an elevator does inside a building. This would be cheap, efficient, and would bring the cost of getting to space down.

The problem with this idea has always been whether or not we have the material to make such a wire. Nothing we currently have is strong enough to not break simply under its own weight. One theory is that we could use carbon nanotubes to do it. No one knew how to make wire from carbon nanotubes, until now:

“An international team of scientists has successfully found a way to spin tens of millions of carbon nanotubes into a flexible conductive thread that’s a quarter of the thickness of human hair.

“We finally have a nanotube fiber with properties that don’t exist in any other material,” said lead researcher Matteo Pasquali of Rice University. “It looks like black cotton thread but behaves like both metal wires and strong carbon fibers.”

The thread has ten times the tensile strength of steel and is as conductive as copper, but is flexible enough to be wound around a spool or woven.”

If you can wind or weave the material, you can most certainly spin it into a cable. Creating a wire from a carbon nanotube could be the last piece of the puzzle needed to build a space elevator. While it would be an engineering challenge to build the wire, assuming this cable would be strong enough, there is no reason why we couldn’t build it. If we can get past the first 50 miles off the planet, there are limitless possibilities in space for us.