But...Why?

Have you heard about this? (I hope not, or it makes this post pointless)…but:

A Dutch architect by the name of Janjaap Ruijssenaars (bless you), has created the world’s first floating bed.

That’s right, a floating bed. Even if I hadn’t told you he was Dutch, couldn’t you have guessed that this invention came from a country where drugs are legal?

I can picture it now. ‘ole Janjaap was in a week café in Amsterdam and suddenly turned to one of his friends and said.

“Theesh bedjsh! You know their problem? Too many legjsh!”

One of these floating marvels will set you back a staggering 1.2 million Euros. For the mathematically impaired, that’s 810,000GBP or approximately $1,485,000 dollars.

Yes, if you’re willing to stump up one and a half million dollars, you to can own a bed that floats off the ground.

However, this isn’t as magical as it seems. Basically, the bed and the floor have magnets set into them that repel each other, and the bed is held in position by thin steel cables.

Ok, now I really have to ask myself one question:

What’s the point in this, really?

I mean, why not just switch out those ‘thin steel cables’ for ‘slightly thicker steel legs’, do away with the magnets and be able to buy this bed for les than a hundred dollars?

You see, I used to have one of those ‘physics magic tricks’, that consisted of a special mat with magnets embedded in it, and a spinning top, also with magnets in it. The idea was you spun the top on the mat, then by carefully raising the top on a special ‘thingie’ (which is a technical term), the top would float in mid air.

It was fun, apart from the small fact that it was almost impossible to get the damn thing to work. Do I really want to sleep on a bed that’s so precisely balanced that the slightest disturbance would throw off the precision balanced forces and have my bed plummet to the ground, is accelerated by the magnets and propelled into the floor with bone crushing force?

The best part of the article was the following:

“Sleeping on the bed should be no problem for people with piercings, however, I’d advise them not to get under the bed as their piercing might suddenly be drawn towards one of the magnets.”

Wha?

We’re talking about a magnetic force strong enough to easily support the weight of a bed frame and a couple of fully grown adults. With that kind of force, what’s it going to do with an earring? Worse yet, imagine what it would do to a ‘Prince Albert’!...Umm, on second thoughts, don’t think about what it would do to a Prince Albert.

Ok, Dutch people (and all the other drug-using inventors out there):

If you can make a bed that just floats without magnets, can be pushed around a room with ease…that we want to see.

However, a magnetic ‘Bed ‘o’ Death’ that has to be tethered to the floor with steel wires, has the potential to rip piercings from your body, and had absolutely no advantage over a regular bed, is in many ways worse than a regular bed…we don’t really want to know.