Boy, 12, Invents Retractable Clothes Drying Rack

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May 22, 2019

Automatic clothes rack inventor A 12-year-old Chinese boy has won top prize at a regional science contest for an automatic clothes drying rack that answers the call of the weather.

Lu Jiezhen, who is in the 6th Grade at North-East Women's Education Center in Nanning, in China's Guangdong Province, found inspiration for the invention in necessity: a scolding from his mother.

Lu's family had hung a load of clean clothes out to dry. Lu was supposed to watch for rain and, if it came, run outside and bring the clothes in, so they didn't get even more wet. He forgot. His mother wasn't happy.

Automatic clothes rack

Lu admitted his mistake and set up making sure that it wouldn't happen again. The result was a clothes rack that includes a network of sensors that have two functions: any hint of rain results in the clothes rack's retracting under a waterproof tarp. Even better, another sensor is light-sensitive, so when the rain has stopped and sunlight has returned, the rack moves itself back out from underneath the tarp, so the clothes can dry.

Lu and his father and a few of his teachers worked on the invention for a few months. Judges at the 34th Guangxi Provincial Youth Science and Technology Innovation Contest awarded Lu and his invention first prize.

Lu said that he had no immediate plans to build any more.

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