Amy Smith shares simple, lifesaving design
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| Audience/Grade: | College Freshman-Continuing Education |
| Discipline(s): |
Biological Systems and Agricultural Engineering Community-based Service Learning General Engineering, Engineering Science |
| Special Topic(s): | |
| Learning Resource Type: |
Teaching - Lecture/Presentation |
| Media Type: |
WWW |
| Author(s): |
Amy Smith |
| Description: | TED video: Ideas worth spreading. "Fumes from indoor cooking fires kill more than 2 million children a year in the developing world. MIT engineer Amy Smith details an exciting but simple solution: a tool for turning farm waste into clean-burning charcoal." |
| Rating: |
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| Related Resources | |
| Keywords: | community-based design; project learning; service learning charcoal farm waste cookstoves |
| Is Component of: |
TED Videos - Ideas worth spreading |
| Usage Tip | |
| Related ABET Criteria: |
(c) Design a system, component, or process (h) Understand global, economic, environmental, and societal context |
| Use of Resource: |
Inspirational speaker. I have assigned to my freshman/sophomore community-based design class in sustainability. "Mechanical engineer Amy Smith's approach to problem-solving in developing nations is refreshingly common-sense: Invent cheap, low-tech devices that use local resources, so communities can reproduce her efforts and ultimately help themselves. Smith, working with her students at MIT's D-Lab, has come up with several useful tools, including an incubator that stays warm without electricity, a simple grain mill, and a tool that converts farm waste into cleaner-burning charcoal. The inventions have earned Smith three prestigious prizes: the B.F. Goodrich Collegiate Inventors Award, the MIT-Lemelson Prize, and a MacArthur "genius" grant. Her course, "Design for Developing Countries," is a pioneer in bringing humanitarian design into the curriculum of major institutions. Going forward, the former Peace Corps volunteer strives to do much more, bringing her inventiveness and boundless energy to bear on some of the world's most persistent problems." |
| Difficulty: |
Medium |
| Interactivity Level: |
Medium |
| Version Info | |
| Publication Date: | February 2006 |
| Platform/Format: |
WWW |
| Cost: |
Free |
| Download URL: | http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_smith_shares_simple_lifesaving_desig |
| Metadata: |
IEEE LOM Record |
| Collection: |
NEEDS
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