Ping Pong...for 3???

Inventor Creates Ping Pong for Three

KAILUA-KONA, Hawaii - Secil Boyd keeps dreaming up new ideas from remote control flying gadgets to new table games and even space-matter theories. "My mind doesn't seem to turn off so easily," the 53-year-old inventor joked at his Holualoa art gallery.

Boyd has invented a type of three-player ping pong, he's come up with a special relativity theory and even made a remote control flying toy out of a Christmas gift from his daughter.

TriPong uses an odd-shaped table at regulation ping pong height and Plexiglas "nets" that divide the table into three wedges, each with a neutral zone and scoring zone.

He pitched the idea several months ago to a major mainland sports company and now is in negotiations for a development contract. After a presentation, their production staff built one and have played it since, Boyd said.

"By this time next year," Boyd said. "I predict this will be the hottest seller they've got."

The idea came from his father, who taught his two sons cutthroat billiards.

"With three players, you've got that extra competitive energy," he said. "It just changes the game."

Each player starts with one point and it takes three points to win, so players must team up to keep themselves in the game.

"If you win TriPong, you're better than the other two players," Boyd said. "When you lose the ability to play like a team, the winner will emerge."

Another of Boyd's creations is a remote control disk toy that he's turned into a type of hovercraft.

"My daughter brought it from the mainland and I've modified it a bit," Boyd said. "If I had seen just the specs on this, I would have said it would never fly. Watch this."

It looks like a colorful plastic hubcap with a small rotor tucked inside. Boyd set it on the ground, grabbed the remote control and sent it zipping straight up 15 feet.

With lights spinning and blinking, the hubcap hovercraft dipped and glided above the stage. After a few minutes, he landed it at his feet.

But Boyd doesn't just work with table games and toys.

His spatial relativity theory involves the String Theory, the Big Bang theory, quotes from Albert Einstein and something Boyd calls the "elemental particle." It is, he contends, the smallest possible piece of physical matter in the physical universe.

He claims that if he could break down space into these basic particles, they could be used for electricity.

Now, he just needs to prove his theory.

To demonstrate his theory, he picks up two ping pong balls glued together, and another two, locking them into a pyramid shape — the elemental particle.

"It's an equilateral tetrahedron and it's really all about shape," he said. "This isn't like the String Theory; that's philosophy," he said. "You cannot divide physical matter to infinity. You just cannot. Otherwise you don't have an assembly process."

Five elemental particles combine to form one electron, Boyd said.

Boyd is seeking investors to build a prototype spatial energy converter to test his theory, which he said could have energy, medical and military-industrial applications.

"This should be easy to disprove," he said, "But if we are correct, we've revolutionized physics and the electric grid as we know it won't be needed anymore."