June 1, 2005: Headlines: Figures: COS - Botswana: Engineering: Inventions:: Mechanical Engineering: "I've always been motivated-to work in a way that has a larger benefit;" RPCV Amy Smith said, "and I like engineering and design." In the 1980s, when Smith attended MIT as an undergraduate, she saw engineering as a field that wasn't attuned to serving the greater good. The focus, she said, was on defense and automotive applications.

Peace Corps Online: Directory: Botswana: Special Report: Inventor and Botswana RPCV Amy Smith: April 4, 2005: Index: PCOL Exclusive: RPCV Amy Smith (Botswana) : June 1, 2005: Headlines: Figures: COS - Botswana: Engineering: Inventions:: Mechanical Engineering: "I've always been motivated-to work in a way that has a larger benefit;" RPCV Amy Smith said, "and I like engineering and design." In the 1980s, when Smith attended MIT as an undergraduate, she saw engineering as a field that wasn't attuned to serving the greater good. The focus, she said, was on defense and automotive applications.

By Admin1 (admin) (pool-151-196-245-37.balt.east.verizon.net - 151.196.245.37) on Saturday, June 25, 2005 - 6:31 am: Edit Post

"I've always been motivated-to work in a way that has a larger benefit;" RPCV Amy Smith said, "and I like engineering and design." In the 1980s, when Smith attended MIT as an undergraduate, she saw engineering as a field that wasn't attuned to serving the greater good. The focus, she said, was on defense and automotive applications.

I've always been motivated-to work in a way that has a larger benefit; RPCV Amy Smith said, and I like engineering and design. In the 1980s, when Smith attended MIT as an undergraduate, she saw engineering as a field that wasn't attuned to serving the greater good. The focus, she said, was on defense and automotive applications.

Inventor Amy Smith teaches at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Botswana.

"I've always been motivated-to work in a way that has a larger benefit;" RPCV Amy Smith said, "and I like engineering and design." In the 1980s, when Smith attended MIT as an undergraduate, she saw engineering as a field that wasn't attuned to serving the greater good. The focus, she said, was on defense and automotive applications.

HAVE DUCT TAPE, WILL TRAVEL
Jun 1, 2005 - Mechanical Engineering
One young engineer has turned simple materials into life- changing tools.

Advertisers like to make us think that our possessions tell the story of who we are. In the case of Amy Smith, there might be some truth in that idea. Just take a look at her computer case.

Smith, a mechanical engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, carries around her titanium Macintosh laptop in an envelope made from foam rubber and duct tape. "It's perfect," Smith said, "because most of the time you want to put your laptop in your backpack, but if you put it in a store-bought case, it won't fit." Not only is her duct-tape computer case functional, but it's fashionable: gray, like her laptop, and sporting an Apple sticker.

This marriage of humble material and brilliant design has caught the attention of foundations and institutions. Most recently, the John D. and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation awarded Smith one of Hs prestigious MacArthur Fellowships, the so-called genius award. Many who have received the award in previous years specialized in high- tech applications-Tim Berners-Lee, who devised the World Wide Web, or Naomi Leonard of Princeton University, who also won a MacArthur Fellowship last year for her work on autonomous underwater vehicles. Smith, by contrast, is applying her design expertise to devising inexpensive solutions to pressing needs in the developing world.


In January, in the aftermath of winning the MacArthur Fellowship, Smith took a trip to the Caribbean. But instead of a much-needed rest-Smith admits to putting in 80 hours a week at work-she spent the month in rural Haiti. It was a chance to set up three rural gardens and work on some irrigation projects. She also saw the completion of a prototype grain mill that could revolutionize ife in remote corners of the Third World.

"I've always been motivated-to work in a way that has a larger benefit;" Smith said, "and I like engineering and design." In the 1980s, when Smith attended MIT as an undergraduate, she saw engineering as a field that wasn't attuned to serving the greater good. The focus, she said, was on defense and automotive applications.

She decided to make a break from that world. After Smith graduated from MIT in 1984, she put her convictions to the test by joining the Peace Corps. As a volunteer in Botswana, she began teaching mathematics, English, and science to junior high school students.

"I learned a lot, especially in the first six months," Smith said. "But while I really enjoyed the teaching, it made me realize that I really enjoy problem-solving. And it is problem-solving to try to figure out how to get people to understand things, but I began to see that engineering would be fun to do in that setting."

The mill developed by Amy Smith crushes grain with rotating blades. Aerodynamic forces push the flour through the opening in the faceplate.

Smith signed on for a second two-year stint in the Peace Corps, this time as an agricultural extension agent. "I coordinated the regional bee-keeping program for my district," Smith said. "There were a lot of things that we needed that we didn't have. We needed smokers, so we looked at some smokers, made a few tweaks in the design, and had local craftsmen make them." She also designed, among other things, a hand-cranking audiocassette rewinder out of an eggbeater.

Not the Next Great Widget

After four years in Botswana, Smith came home to the United States and began graduate studies at MIT. It was 1990, and the culture at the engineering school was in flux. "I remember when I joined the Peace Corps, there were many people who were concerned about how that was going to look on my rsum," Smith said.

By the time she returned to the U.S., that was no longer the case. What's more, the emphasis on campus had begun to shift from defense projects to more consumer-oriented items. But Smith was less interested in coming up with the next great widget and more in designing ways to help solve real problems affecting millions, even billions, of people.

Smith found projects in her masters and Ph.D. program that matched her ambition. One of the first was developing a new type of grain mill that could revolutionize the lives of women in the Third World.

Grain-be it millet, maize, or wheat-is a staple in most diets. To increase their shelf life and to make them easier to cook, many grains are ground into flour. This flour can be baked into bread or served as porridge, depending on the culture.

Often in underdeveloped areas, this grinding must be done by hand, with women crushing the kernels between a rock or mortar and a flat stone or bowl. It's a hard job, physically demanding, and can take an hour to make four pounds of flour.

A motor-driven mill can accomplish the same task in just a couple of minutes, but motorized mills are difficult to come by and expensive to maintain. Smith realized that coming up with a simpler, cheaper mill would be a boon for many families.

Three basic kinds of grain mills have developed over time. Grain can be compressed and sheared between two sets of rollers. Since the distance between the rollers establishes the fineness of the flour, this kind of mill requires expensive machining and alignment. Another familiar type of mill crushes the grain between two sets of plates. The mill plates or stones are heavy and costly, and must be replaced periodically.

The third type of mill uses a series of rotating blades or hammers to crunch grains. Once the particle size is reduced sufficiently, the flour passes through a fine mesh screen and is collected. Smith saw mills of this sort while traveling through Zimbabwe, but many of them weren't working-their screens were broken, enabling partially ground grains to pass through. The screens can't be made locally, and so are almost impossible to replace.

Could a hammermill be built that didn't rely on screens? Working from a design first proposed by Carl Bielenberg of Appropriate Technology International of Washington, D.C., Smith developed a mill that used blowing air to separate the flour from the grain. "My mill separates things using aerodynamic properties," Smith said. "You don't have a fine-fine in the sense of delicate-part which can get destroyed in the process. It's more rugged." Using a tan inside the grinding chamber, the air stream is just powerful enough to carry the pulverized grain through a chute, while leaving the rest to be ground further.


Local men examine the cornmeal produced by the improved hammermill during field tests conducted in Haiti earlier this year.

"The mill also separates the product into two sizes," Smith said. "This means you don't have to sift if you want to separate the flour from the grits. That's something that I didn't realize would be important until I went into the field." The people who tested it told Smith it wasn't a bug, but a feature.

The mill is also far, far cheaper than existing models. Depending on the availability of electricity, the mill can be made by rural craftsmen for as little as $500-a tenth the cost of imported mills in places such as rural Haiti.

The mill is still in the field-testing phase, but Smith envisions that a final design will be ready by next year. Then, she hopes, it will be built all over the world. "Ideally, the technology disseminates on its own," she said. "It has a competitive advantage."

Smith and her students at MIT have taken on other projects, too. They have developed a -water-testing kit that costs $20 to make, rather than the $1,000 for conventional kits. A device to control the chlorination in a Central American water supply system was cobbled together from parts of a toilet tank. And Smith's group developed a clamp for controlling intravenous fluid that could help nurses care for more patients during an epidemic.

Wacky Designs

And then there's the duct tape. After getting compliments on her laptop case, Smith and some friends, put together a duct tape design competition for MIT students and local children. There are classes on how to make wallets and roses out of the stuff. The"best designs- a dragon, say, or a suit of armor-get prizes: rolls of duct tape.

"We spend three hours on "a Saturday making things out of duct tape," Smith said. "MIT is just full of wacky people who like doing this stutf."

It's thdt kind of wackiness that can change the world.

By Jeffrey Winters, Associate Editor

Copyright American Society of Mechanical Engineers Jun 2005





When this story was posted in June 2005, this was on the front page of PCOL:


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The Peace Corps Library Date: March 27 2005 No: 536 The Peace Corps Library
Peace Corps Online is proud to announce that the Peace Corps Library is now available online. With over 30,000 index entries in 500 categories, this is the largest collection of Peace Corps related stories in the world. From Acting to Zucchini, you can find hundreds of stories about what RPCVs with your same interests or from your Country of Service are doing today. If you have a web site, support the "Peace Corps Library" and link to it today.

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American Taboo: A Peace Corps Tragedy Date: June 20 2005 No: 661 American Taboo: A Peace Corps Tragedy
Returned Volunteers met with author Philip Weiss in Baltimore on June 18 to discuss the murder of Peace Corps Volunteer Deborah Gardner. Weiss was a member of a panel that included three psychiatrists and a criminal attorney. Meanwhile, the Seattle U.S. Attorney's office announced that Dennis Priven cannot be retried for the murder. "We do not believe this case can be prosecuted by anyone, not only us, but in any other jurisdiction in the United States." Read background on the case here.

June 16, 2005: Special Events Date: June 16 2005 No: 654 June 16, 2005: Special Events
Philip Weiss, PCV murder writer, speaks in Baltimore June 18
"Rainforests and Refugees" showing in Portland, Maine until June 25
"Iowa in Ghana" on exhibit in Waterloo through June 30
NPCA to hold Virtual Leaders Forum on July 29
RPCV's "Taking the Early Bus" at Cal State until Aug 15
"Artists and Patrons in Traditional African Cultures" in NY thru Sept 30
RPCVs: Post your stories or press releases here for inclusion next week.

June 14: Peace Corps suspends Haiti program Date: June 14 2005 No: 651 June 14: Peace Corps suspends Haiti program
After Uzbekistan, the Peace Corps has announced the suspension of a second program this month - this time in Haiti. Background: The suspension comes after a US Embassy warning, a request from Tom Lantos' office, and the program suspension last year. For the record: PCOL supports Peace Corps' decision to suspend the two programs and commends the agency for the efficient way PCVs were evacuated safely. Our only concern now is with the placement of evacuated PCVs and the support they receive after interrupted service.

June 6: PC suspends Uzbekistan program Date: June 7 2005 No: 640 June 6: PC suspends Uzbekistan program
Peace Corps has announced that it is suspending the Uzbekistan program after the visas of 52 Peace Corps volunteers who arrived in January were not renewed. The suspension comes after a State Department warning that terrorist groups may be planning attacks in Uzbekistan and after the killings in Andizhan earlier in May. Background: PCOL published a report on April 23 that Peace Corps volunteers who arrived in January were having visa difficulties and reported on safety and visa issues in Uzbekistan as they developed.

June 6, 2005: This Week's Top Stories Date: June 12 2005 No: 643 June 6, 2005: This Week's Top Stories
Kinky Friedman will "sign anything except bad legislation" 6 Jun
Niels Marquardt Makes Chimpanzee Protection a Priority 6 Jun
Laurence Leamer needs approval for "Today" appearance 6 Jun
Desperate Housewives' Ricardo Chavira is son of RPCVs 6 Jun
Anthony Sandberg runs Berkeley sailing school 5 Jun
Amy Smith field-tests sugarcane charcoal 5 Jun
Mary Johnson organizes workshop on genocide 3 Jun
Jonathan Lash in 100 most Influential Business Leaders 3 Jun
Hastert jump-starts Chris Shays' Campaign 3 Jun
John Coyne says 41 RPCVs applied for scholarships 3 Jun
James Rupert writes on bombing in Kandahar mosque 1 Jun
John McCain says to expand opportunities for service 1 Jun
Jay Rockefeller's relationships with Japanese go way back 1 Jun
Anat Shenker met her husband during service in Honduras 31 May
Ryan Clancy punished without hearing for visiting Iraq 30 May
Melissa Mosvick remembered as a fallen American hero 29 May
Kurt Carlson played basketball against Togo's national team 29 May
Helen Thomas's favorite president remains JFK 24 May

Friends of the Peace Corps 170,000  strong Date: April 2 2005 No: 543 Friends of the Peace Corps 170,000 strong
170,000 is a very special number for the RPCV community - it's the number of Volunteers who have served in the Peace Corps since 1961. It's also a number that is very special to us because March is the first month since our founding in January, 2001 that our readership has exceeded 170,000. And while we know that not everyone who comes to this site is an RPCV, they are all "Friends of the Peace Corps." Thanks everybody for making PCOL your source of news for the Returned Volunteer community.


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Story Source: Mechanical Engineering

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