With great ingenuity comes great innovation. A team of four college students took that mantra to heart when they created Spider-Man sanitizer shooters to limit the spread of COVID-19.
A former Dragon that has since gone on to study biomedical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, Omar Bukhari was brainstorming ways to prevent COVID-19 when his team came up with a creative solution.
“We repurposed a lighter into a bracelet contraption to shoot hand sanitizer at surfaces and hands to prevent contamination,” Omar says. “It uses the lever mechanism of a lighter with sanitizer inputted using a syringe to disperse the substance.”
Similar to Spider-Man’s iconic web-shooters, teammate Lauren Hesse says she came up with the idea while working at a child daycare over the summer.
“I was constantly digging around in my backpack for hand sanitizer with possibly contaminated hands,” Lauren recalls. “I wanted a quick and easy way to sanitize my hands or a high-contact surface like a door handle.”
Omar says the sanitizer shooters remind younger kids to disinfect their hands and make hand washing a more interactive solution. He says he hopes more people utilizes his team's unique and enjoyable solution in the months ahead to continue fending off COVID-19.
“It works just like Spidey’s web-shooters,” Omar expresses. “The only difference is that one shoots webs while the other shoots sanitizer.”