A simple request
July 15th 2008 08:34
An request in Slashdot for some ideas for a TED conference elicited some snide comments, some helpful ones, and some that looked at items that don’t encourage well-off people to spend more money on toys or diet pills, but rather offer help to people in Third World situations.
I can’t tell you exactly who responded in this way, as people on Slashdot tend to use only usernames, but here’s the list he or she came up with.
The rollable water container - a round thing that you can roll over to get water with, rather than carrying it on your back/arms/head
This is probably the Q-Drum, a round plastic drum with a hole through the centre that the handle fits in. Children can pull it along quite easily, thus saving strain on backs, arms and heads.
The little heater with an AA rechargeable battery in it for the fan, that you recharge at the local solar panel
Precise information about how this is done can be found here.
The huge and incredible mobile phone informal/illegal repair subculture in developing countries - such as putting 2 Sim(card)s in the same mobile with a simple switch mechanism.
I don’t fully understand the point of this, but it’s obviously big-time already. Perhaps someone can explain it to me. Here’s just one example.
The pot with sand in it, and a smaller pot inside, that uses the physical properties of wet
sand to create a refrigeration system for fruit and other perishables at markets
You can read the full story about this ‘invention’ by Nigerian teacher Mohammed Bah Abba here. Basically he used an ages old technique and refined it.
The solar furnace - a curved mirror or reflective sheet with a black pot in the middle.
Here’s some info about this:
Although power towers can reach high temperatures, solar furnaces are able to get even hotter. They collect energy over a wide area, and focus it on a single spot. Some scientific experiments can be affected by the impurity of the fuel used to heat them, Solar furnaces are ideal for such experiments, because the Sun's energy is pure.
The best known solar furnace is at Odeilo in France. Curved mirrors cover the whole of one side of a ten storey building to form one large mirror, which focuses the Sun's rays on to an area of less than one square metre. 11000 flat mirrors on the opposite hillside follow the Sun and reflect its rays on to the large curved mirror. A tower in front of this larger mirror houses the target area, at the focus of all the rays, where temperatures can reach 33000 degrees Celsius.
The Indian project to use harvested stomach bacteria to process recycled food into gas for cooking.
I thought at first it was talking about human bacteria, but I suspect that isn’t the case. Anyway, you can read the whole report here.
I can’t tell you exactly who responded in this way, as people on Slashdot tend to use only usernames, but here’s the list he or she came up with.
The rollable water container - a round thing that you can roll over to get water with, rather than carrying it on your back/arms/head
This is probably the Q-Drum, a round plastic drum with a hole through the centre that the handle fits in. Children can pull it along quite easily, thus saving strain on backs, arms and heads.
The little heater with an AA rechargeable battery in it for the fan, that you recharge at the local solar panel
Precise information about how this is done can be found here.
The huge and incredible mobile phone informal/illegal repair subculture in developing countries - such as putting 2 Sim(card)s in the same mobile with a simple switch mechanism.
I don’t fully understand the point of this, but it’s obviously big-time already. Perhaps someone can explain it to me. Here’s just one example.
The pot with sand in it, and a smaller pot inside, that uses the physical properties of wet
You can read the full story about this ‘invention’ by Nigerian teacher Mohammed Bah Abba here. Basically he used an ages old technique and refined it.
The solar furnace - a curved mirror or reflective sheet with a black pot in the middle.
Here’s some info about this:
Although power towers can reach high temperatures, solar furnaces are able to get even hotter. They collect energy over a wide area, and focus it on a single spot. Some scientific experiments can be affected by the impurity of the fuel used to heat them, Solar furnaces are ideal for such experiments, because the Sun's energy is pure.
The best known solar furnace is at Odeilo in France. Curved mirrors cover the whole of one side of a ten storey building to form one large mirror, which focuses the Sun's rays on to an area of less than one square metre. 11000 flat mirrors on the opposite hillside follow the Sun and reflect its rays on to the large curved mirror. A tower in front of this larger mirror houses the target area, at the focus of all the rays, where temperatures can reach 33000 degrees Celsius.
The Indian project to use harvested stomach bacteria to process recycled food into gas for cooking.
I thought at first it was talking about human bacteria, but I suspect that isn’t the case. Anyway, you can read the whole report here.
| 35 |
| Vote |
Shared on
Subscribe to this blog
