Lecture 2 Designer Biomaterials

Last week, Dr. Anita Shukla of Brown University came in to speak to us about drug delivery engineering. She spoke about its importance for many things including pain relievers hemostatic dressings. She spoke to us about her different obstacles as well as her impressive outcomes including insight into drug-resistant bacteria. This lecture, although mostly biology based, was very insightful in how to go about creating a project, testing it,  seeing what works, and making note of any problems that you run into. Even though they are on two different places on the science spectrum, the scientific method will remain the same.

lecture 1

Last week we were invited to a lecture that was intended to pull students who may be interested in engineering. The woman giving the lecture spoke about how she had started off as a math major, but she realized her true passion lay with building, and so she looked into engineering as a career option. This brief talk was very insightful because not only did she give us a brief overview of an interesting project that she was working on, but she also showed us that we do not have to major in engineering if we ever decide to become engineers (although it would be useful).
I enjoyed this lecture and cannot wait for the next one!

Stove

Over the last two weeks, we have been working on building stoves that would benefit people in third world countries in an easy, affordable, and most importantly, reliable way. We started out designing our stoves on paper individually. After we did this, we got into teams and began picking and choosing features that we liked in each idea so that we could piece together a design.

When we were finished with our design, we expected the stove to look something like this. We wanted a door that was easy to open and shut, a fuel storage area that was low, concentrated, and adjustable, and a chimney to help with healthier airflow.

As we began to build the model out of cardboard, we began to realize that we did not need things such as the legs of the oven and that instead, it could just sit on the ground. The cardboard model ended up looking like this.

As shown in the picture, there are racks that can be pulled from and pushed into the stove. These racks hold the fuel that when lit, would heat the stove top above it. Once we finished the paper sketch and the cardboard model of the stove, we were ready to move onto making our final stove with metal.





We were ultimately very happy with our final product. When we tested it out using charcoal as fuel on the rack with the middle intensity, the water temperature raised by 29 degrees Celcius.
The heat increase went like this
 Time   Temp (degrees C)
2:07       24
2:19      36
2:29      40
2:39     44.5
2:46     46.6
3:08     53

While we were happy with our results, we were not completely satisfied.  We would have liked it to heat the water a little bit more in addition to make minor design changes such as move the chimney so that it is facing more upward or fix the ability for the stove to be manipulated more easily. We hope to work on this in the future.

Power in Everyday Objects

*See work in notes

For this assignment, we were asked to estimate the amount of power that everyday items use. These were the numbers I came up with:

Power required for:
Light: 2-8 watts based off of previous knowledge
Tv: 100-300 watts, assuming that it takes up the same amount of power as a computer does.
Computer: 100-300 watts according to the computer adapter
Car: 20,000 watts
Motorcycle:10,000 watts
Fridge: 700 watts
Oven: 700 watts
Radio: 15 watts




** Assignment completed on Sept 29, 2013. Publishing date does not indicate date of completion.

Personal Energy Consumption

Over the course of the last three days, I have been instructed to track my energy consumption. This can be interpreted however I choose to do so. This is how I split it up.

Day One:
Lights: ~20 watts. I never turned a light on this day, but I shared lights with others (in buildings such as the science center and the campus center)
Computer:~400 watts. I used my computer at high efficiency for approximately two hours.
Food:~400 watts. Collectively I assumed that the time spent cooking the food that I ate and cleaning the dishes that I ate from took about 400 watts of power.

Overall for day one: 820 watts

Day Two:
Lights: ~100 watts. Combined with personal use and classroom use, I used many lights this day.
Computer:~ 400 watts.
Food:~ 400 watts.

Overall for day two: 900 watts

Day Three:
Lights:~100 watts
Computer:~100 watts
Food:~300 watts
Because I had a heavy work day in my text books, I did not end up using much external energy.

Overall for day three: 500 watts

Water Challenge

Over the past week, we were asked to participate in a water challenge. The rules of the challenge were quite simple: don't use water from your home (or living area eg. dorms) for one week. Unfortunately due to a busy schedule and the inconvenience of not being able to both shower and sleep, I did not physically participate in this challenge for more than 24 hours. However, attempting to participate in this challenge really made me think about the water that I use on a daily basis. Very quickly I noticed how much water I was actually using every day, and it was a lot more than I thought. Each day I showered which lasted about 3-6 minutes. I also brushed my teeth 2-3 times a day, washed my hands 4-7 times a day, and used the toilet 2-3 times a day. It was incredible how quickly all of these things added up. I think that this exercise is great for raising awareness about water conservation because it is easier to understand how much water you are using on a daily basis if you are actually tracking your use.

Water Backpack

"Write a blog post discussing your perception of this technology, how it was developed, and its pros and cons.  If you had $10,000 to spend on addressing water issues in developing countries, would you apply it toward this technology?  Why or why not?"

The WaterWear backpack is a backpack designed to make the transporting of water an easier task than it currently is. It is made of lightweight polypropylene and it has adjustable straps and can be stood up when filling with water. Additionally there is a protected spout on the bag to make for clean water usage. The positives are that this bag is easy to carry, convenient, and it keeps water clean for drinking use. This bag is also easily transported, making for cheap transportation costs and more effective distribution. However a serious negative is how little water the bag contains. It carries a little more than a fourth of the water that its counterpart does (20 liters while the Hipporoller carries 75.7 liters) 

I believe this could be a great technology, but not for places that are too far away from water sources because the trip to and from the water would seem almost futile.

That being said, if I were given $10,000 to spend on addressing the water needs in developing countries, this technology would not be the first thing I would go to. While the product seems safe and reliable, it also appears to be not as effective as some of its counterparts. I would work on making sure that the larger containers were sanitized, and thus there would be larger amounts of clean water.  I feel that there are more efficient ways to go about this problem, although the WaterWear backpack seems like a viable option for a more developed country in a crisis.