permaculture

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lfl@intrex.net>]

http://www.theconnection.org/shows/2004/10/20041011_b_main.asp

Hosted by: Dick Gordon  Show Originally Aired: 10/11/2004
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Helpful Inventions
Amy Smith (Photo: Donna Coveney/MIT)

Helpful Inventions
Amy Smith has dedicated her life to solving problems in the Third World. From health clinics with no electricity to African villages with no 
clean water, the MacArthur Award winner is being celebrated for her life changing inventions. more

Since living in Botswana, Amy Smith has dedicated her life to solving daily problems in the developing world. From machines that produce 
clean drinking water, vaccines and cheap charcoal, the MIT instructor's inventions are made with local materials.

Beyond making life easier for the world's poor, Smith also wants to change what it means to be an inventor. In a world obsessed with gizmos 
costing hundreds of dollars, Smith wants instead to focus minds and imaginations on simple solutions for big problems.

[View inventions from Amy Smith's D-Lab.]

Screenless Hammermill
The Improved Screenless Hammermill, developedby Amy Smith of MIT. The main objective of this project was to improve the performance of the 
screenless hammermill (see Screenless Hammermill Background) by increasing the throughput and the percentage of flour reclaimed, all while 
maintaining flour quality.

A briquette press used to compress waste paper (This approach was later abandoned by the D-lab group in favor of carbonization and limited 
compression). During D-lab 2002-2003, members of the class were working on developing ways to transform waste into briquettes suitable for 
cooking purposes. After several failures, they discovered that the best approach was to transform the waste into charcoal.

        
D-lab students trying out the cheap water testing system in Honduras. By building upon an invention by Instructor Amy Smith, students taking 
last year's D-lab class brought a technology for cheaply test drinking water in developing countries significantly closer to a finished, 
workable product.


The down and dirty way of fixing a problem of overchlorination in Honduras.
Using spare parts from a flush toilet, the D-lab Honduras team solved a problem of overchlorination in a community's water supply. The 
toilet apparatus served as a feedback mechanism for the chlorinating tank, thus simply solving the problem.

Brewing some special pot-in-a-pot liquid for testing refrigeration. Mohammed Bah Abba, a Nigerian teacher, invented a simple way to keep 
vegetables cool by using the power of evaporation. The basic idea is that a smaller earthenware pot in nestled within another pot, and the 
space in between is filled with sand and water. When that water evaporates, it pulls heat from the interior of the smaller pot. It is in 
this cool area that vegetables and fruits are kept.
        
		Since living in Botswana, Amy Smith has dedicated her life to solving daily problems in the developing world. From machines that produce 
clean drinking water, vaccines and cheap charcoal, the MIT instructor's inventions are made with local materials.

Beyond making life easier for the world's poor, Smith also wants to change what it means to be an inventor. In a world obsessed with gizmos 
costing hundreds of dollars, Smith wants instead to focus minds and imaginations on simple solutions for big problems.