Trolling for summer work ideas

Hello World.

So here it is, Monday morning. I awoke to an amazing splitting headache, in a dorm-style room with too few blinds, too thin walls and with an amazing, tall, driven and educated woman at my side. This May morning feels like the kind of morning you sit out front of Hulings and listen to Rob Oden (dated reference, I know) pontificate about how today is the beginning of it all but that since the day you arrived at Carleton, you were destined for this change... Blah Blah Blah. It's just such a pretty day. Makes me love being alive, even with a hangover. (Undergrads can DRINK.)

(EDIT: Now that I'm an east coast kid, I use driven in senses other than the pejorative... What does that say about who I've become?)

So now that I've set the stage a little bit here, let me delve into the issue that brings me to post from work. I'm working this summer--my summer without an extended summer vacation--and have been charged with making a summer to-do list here at AU. I'm employed full-time and will be teaching five hours per week... which leaves 30 hours per week to do other things.

So, for everyone, what was the single thing that most improved your learning while at Carleton? (Sorry, it has to be a thing, not a person)

Now alienate most of my audience, scientists, what does your department have that you think my department needs? (I have a machine shop, I have unlimited internet hosting capabilities, I have a decent budget... but probably not enough to buy a set of PS3s and make a supercomputer. Sadly)

Now to alienate Will (are there any other non-physics scientists who read this blag?), Physicists, what do you think I should make? So far I've got a Bell-inequality lab, the bike thing I posted on facebook and an electromagnetic can crusher... I'm thinking E&M stuffs but am of course open to other fields. Maybe something RC that involves some servo motors?

If you have any ideas to help me on this quest, please let me know. I'll post video of my can crusher when it's done. And DAMN it's going to be cool. (Preview: it tears apart a can by discharging a fuck-ton of electricity through it, no contact needed between the can and the machine.)