Alarm clock that won't give up

Published on Saturday 27 May 2006 01:00

AN ALARM clock that will not switch off until the slumberer has shown they are fully awake has been invented by a student at Strathclyde University.

The puzzle clock, created by Liam Hastie for his engineering degree, is designed to overcome "sleep inertia" - the groggy feeling which, scientists say, can impair mental faculties for ten minutes, but sometimes for up to two hours after waking.

The wall-mounted alarm clock can be switched off only when its user climbs out of bed, stands directly in front and repeats, by pressing coloured buttons, a sequence generated randomly each morning. If the user fails to repeat the sequence swiftly, the alarm will continue to blare until the task is completed correctly.

Research into "sleep inertia" has discovered the pre-frontal cortex - the area of the brain which is responsible for problem-solving, emotion and complex thought - is among those that take longer to operate properly after sleep.

Mr Hastie, 23 - who designed a prototype as part of his degree course in design, manufacture and engineering management - was inspired by his own experience of repeatedly pressing the snooze button on his alarm as many as 20 times rather than getting up. He said: "Alarm clocks are good at waking you - what they are not good at is actually getting you out of bed.

"Then I read about the concept of 'sleep inertia' and decided to invent an alarm clock that not only got you out of bed, but would only go off when you demonstrated that your pre-frontal cortex was actually online."

Dr Neil Stanley, a past president of the British Sleep Society, described the new invention as "a good idea". He said: "What is interesting is that we don't know exactly how long sleep inertia can last. Some morn-ings I leap out of bed and others I'm much more sluggish."