Keys are mostly made of ferrous metal nowadays (I just checked my own bunch with a magnet), so in order for them to not randomly splay out and form a spikey mess in your pocket, I propose the occasional magnetic key. This would act to weakly stick them all together, so they are all in one lump rather than the spikey ball. Additonally they would be drawn to the opposite pole that would be placed at the very centre of every lock. I must stress that this will be a relatively weak magnet, noone wants to be prising keys apart with pliers.-- bs0u0155, Jun 22 2010 Would this also cause them to pick up random bits of metal that would then end up in the lock?-- swimswim, Jun 22 2010 I suppose yes. But locks are pretty tight on Yale-syle keys at least, so I'd imagine nothing of a damaging size would make it in, and presumeably it would stick on as you pulled it out. It is however a remarkably efficient way of keeping your pockets iron-filing free.-- bs0u0155, Jun 22 2010 I like to put random things in random places... like my thumbdrive in my asspocket along with my keys. Wouldn't this invention potentially erase everything in there?-- daseva, Jun 22 2010 It's funny that you call it an asspocket. Doesn't it hurt when you put keys in there?-- swimswim, Jun 22 2010 No, I'd thought of that. Magnetic media like floppy disks and cassette tapes are things of the past. I'm fairly sure flash drives are resistent.-- bs0u0155, Jun 22 2010 Keys are so outdated.-- DIYMatt, Jun 23 2010 random, halfbakery