13-year-old named David Baker has received a patent for his Light Beam Delivery System, a pico projector that fits in a pen casing, and works by combining three RGB lasers with an optics assembly that creates a light ray that is then shined through a rotating disk to the screen. “When the light goes through the lenses,” he explains, “they take each light pixel and shine it onto a screen or wall. The lenses run back and forth until it fills the screen. This process repeats 30 times per second to make it appear as though you’re looking at a solid image and not a series of pixels, and you have the image projected.”
Even better than the invention is where he got the inspiration for it:
“I was sitting in church thinking about how to make projectors easier to handle and I just thought of it,” said the young inventor, who was a fourth-grader at the time.
See? You can do worthwhile things while sitting in church!
(Thanks to Michael for the link!)