Engineering snacks to whet your appetite
Posted by John Hunter on May 27th, 2010 | No Comments »
Getting clean water is a huge issue for billions of people each day. This is a well known issue that engineers and others have attempted to address. While much has been done, much is left to be done. Such a large and critical issue requires many people to help implement and maintain solutions.
Related: Water, sanitation and hygiene links to health – The PlayPump System – High School Inventor Teams @ MIT – Engineering a Better World – Water and Electricity for All
Filed under Global, Society | Tags: appropriate technology, engineering, making a difference, mechanical engineering
Posted by Sheri on September 2nd, 2008 | 2 Comments »
Perhaps you noticed that a merry-go-round spins like a motor, except instead of electricity, children provide the torque needed to make it turn. However, unlike a regular motor (which often operate at peak efficiencies of about 20-30%), the merry-go-round is 100% inefficient (in a mechanical sense). Why not harness the power the merry-go-round produces? After all, it’s as close to a free, renewable and waste free energy source as you can get.
Engineers realized this untapped energy source by creating The PlayPump, a simple machine powered by kids at play. The Playpump propels water up from under ground into a water storage system that then provides the children’s community access to clean water. Sustained access to clean drinking water creates a ripple effect that can potentially lead to improvements in other areas of the community, like education, health care and economic development.
* A child dies every 15 seconds from diseases related to unsafe water, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene.
* 1.1 billion people worldwide lack access to safe drinking water.
* 40 billion hours each year are spent collecting water in sub-Saharan Africa, equal to over 19 million full-time employees.
* Every $1 invested in water yields an economic return worth $8 in saved time, increased productivity and reduced healthcare costs. (UNDP)
* In many areas of sub-Saharan Africa women and girls often walk an average of five miles to the nearest water source every day. If a woman only had to carry water for one hour a day, she could earn an additional US $100 a year.
Related: via Curious Cat: Water and Electricity for All,
Filed under Global, Innovation | Tags: appropriate technology, economics, kids
Posted by Dylan on August 25th, 2008 | No Comments »
Engineering Students at the University of Texas at Austin recently worked with students at a university in southwest India on the already well known One Laptop per Child program. Five Seniors in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) at UT-Austin collaborated together in two teams with five students at Amrita University in developing a prototypical solar charger for the computer, along with power management software, and in developing a low bandwidth e-learning system for delivering lectures to students in remote areas. The e-learning system will continue to be worked on in the coming year by a new team, while students who participated in the program last year credit it with helping improve communication and teamwork skills.
The senior design sequence is designed to help ensure that students graduating with an ECE degree are adequately prepared to enter an international workforce and become part of teams working on complex projects. This two-semester sequence teaches students skills such as risk and project management and allows them to explore professional-grade tools for capturing their designs and supporting the collaboration. In addition to the multi-institutional option, senior design projects can also be multi-disciplinary, leading, for example, to teams that blend EE and mechanical engineering students.
During the pilot offering of the multi-institutional senior design option, five students at UT and five students at Amrita University in southwest India divided into two cross-institutional teams. Both teams targeted the One Laptop Per Child platform. One team developed the prototype for a solar charger with power management software. The other team developed the prototype of a low-bandwidth e-learning system designed to deliver lectures to remote locations in third-world countries. A new multi-institutional team will continue work on the e-learning system during the 2008-2009 academic year. A participant in the pilot offering reports, “This project taught me how to deal with an international team. Dealing with the cultural, lingual, and time differences made me more confident and improved my communication skills. We got to know the people in India and became a wonderful team with great spirit and enthusiasm.”
Filed under Education, Global | Tags: appropriate technology, computer engineering, Electrical Engineering, engineering education, technology, undergraduate engineering projects
Posted by John Hunter on April 4th, 2008 | 3 Comments »
You cannot look into the eyes of a child who is dying from a disease caused by drinking dirty water — something that rarely, if ever, happens in the United States — and not feel changed. You cannot stand before her parents without thinking, “I’m an engineer. There must be something I can do.”
…
A year later, I returned with 10 engineering students from the University of Colorado. We devised a rudimentary pumping system, bringing water to the people of San Pablo. Today, the village’s young girls go to school and are healthier.That trip was a transforming experience, not just for the villagers, but also for me. Intuitively, we engineers like things big — expansive bridges, colossal dams, massive tunnels. My experience taught me that small-scale engineering can have the most impact on people’s lives.
When I returned to Boulder, I began building something else: Engineers Without Borders — USA. The organization was formed out of the conviction that engineers have a leadership role to play in addressing some of the world’s most serious problems: contaminated water, poor sanitation systems, expensive or harmful energy sources.
In a world focused on bigger and newer, there is growing recognition that small-scale engineering can play a major role in helping end the cycle of poverty that persists among almost half the world’s population. Studies by the World Bank and United Nations suggest the most basic technology is critical to bringing more than 3 billion people out of poverty.
Today EWB-USA counts more than 11,000 student and professional engineers as members and works in 43 countries on 300 projects involving water, sanitation, energy and shelter. Whether it’s combining sustainable technologies with advanced construction techniques to bring affordable housing to pockets of the world, drilling drinking water wells in Kenya, constructing fog collectors in the Himalayas to harvest fresh water or installing solar panels to provide energy for a remote hospital in Rwanda, we are healing communities throughout the globe, giving people dignity and hope for better lives.
Engineers without Borders is another vivid example of the benefits engineering brings to society.
Related: Engineering a Better World – Scientists and Engineers Without Borders – Kick Start Appropriate Technology – Engineering with People in Mind
Filed under Innovation, Society, The Economy, The National Interest | Tags: appropriate technology, engineers, Engineers Without Boarders, making a difference, Society
Posted by John Hunter on June 26th, 2007 | 10 Comments »
MIT’s Amy Smith on appropriate engineering, Recorded February 2006 in Monterey, California. Food, water, medicine — in the developing world, these basic needs can be impossible to meet. Amy Smith and her students design smart, low cost tools to improve the life of the poorest in our world.
I remember traveling with my father as he worked on appropriate technology projects while I was growing up. Engineers can make huge difference to truly improve people’s lives. The video does a nice job of explaining how combining engineering know how with a passion for improving people’s lives have a huge impact. Amy Smith is a MacArthur Fellow (2004-2009)
Related: KickStart (article on Kickstart: Stanford Engineering to Social Innovation) – Segway Inventor working on bringing water and electricity to the world’s poor
Filed under Society, The Economy | Tags: appropriate technology, design, making a difference, Society, webcast