Read Online The Dangerous Joy of Dr. Sex and Other True Stories by Pagan Kennedy - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Pagan Kennedy
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was something that could not only match the efficiency of the hammer mill but also use materials available to a blacksmith in Senegal.
A group of MIT students had come up with some ideas, but Smith, who had ground sorghum by hand in Botswana, knew they werenât fast enough. So she devised a system based on an elegantly
simple element: air. She redesigned the machine to use the air passing through the mill to separate particles. The smaller onesâa.k.a. flourâget carried out while the larger ones stay behind. The resulting machine would cost a quarter of what its predecessors had and use far less energy.
But figuring out how to distribute her machine has turned out to be a far more vexing challenge. Originally, she worked with a group in Senegalâbut they changed their mission before Smith had tweaked the design for the mill. Now, sheâs collaborating with a metalsmith in Haiti, who will translate the design specifications into French, which will allow her to bring the plans to an NGO in Mali that will aid local groups in manufacturing the machine.
For her screenless hammer mill, Smith became the first woman ever to win an MIT-Lemelson Student Prize. Past recipients of the high-profile award for inventing include David Levy, who patented not only the smallest keyboard in the world but also a surgical technique that speeds the splicing of severed arteries.
Smith has a rather tortured relationship with prizes. When I asked her about being named Peace Corps Volunteer of the Year while she was in Botswanaâbeating out 2,500 peopleâshe offered up whimsical logic to explain why she didnât deserve it,
something to do with a batch of brownies. Nor does she take her science awards too seriously. âWinning the Lemelson was helpful. Some people changed their attitude toward me after I won,â she says, and leaves the rest hanging.
Smith, 41, has no kids, no car, no retirement plan, and no desire for a PhD. Her official title: instructor. Her life is like one of her inventions, portable and off-the-grid. âIâm doing exactly what I want to be doing. Why would I spend six years to get a PhD to be in the position Iâm in now but with a title after my name? MIT loves that Iâm doing this work. The support is there. So I donât worry.â It was a good thing that she won the B.F. Goodrich award in 1999, she says, because back then she was stretching a three-month graduate-student stipend to last for a year, and didnât know how sheâd pay her rent. The $7,500 came just in time.
Likewise, the inventors who most inspire her will never strike it rich. âThere are geniuses in Africa, but theyâre not getting the press,â she says. She gushes about Mohammed Bah Abba, a Nigerian teacher who came up with the pot-within-a-pot system. With nothing more than a big terra-cotta bowl, a little pot, some sand and water, Abba created a refrigeratorâthe rig uses evaporation rather than electricity to keep vegetables at 40 degrees.
Innovations that target the poorest of the poor are most effective when they have a certain no-duh quality about themâas soon as you hear an explanation of the way the thingamajig works, you canât believe that it took human beings so long to figure it out.
Smith, of course, aims to design such hidden-in-plain-sight tools and deliver them to the needy. But she also nurses a much grander ambition: to redefine invention itself. To this end, she has co-founded the IDEAS award at MIT; students work with a nonprofit group to solve a problem for the disenfranchised. Last yearâs winners, for instance, included a team that put together a kit for detecting land mines, so that farmers in places like Zimbabwe no longer have to improvise with hoes and rakes when they tap the ground to see whether it might explode.
Success in the IDEAS competition, as well as in the kind of design that Smith pursues, requires humility, because your
A group of MIT students had come up with some ideas, but Smith, who had ground sorghum by hand in Botswana, knew they werenât fast enough. So she devised a system based on an elegantly
simple element: air. She redesigned the machine to use the air passing through the mill to separate particles. The smaller onesâa.k.a. flourâget carried out while the larger ones stay behind. The resulting machine would cost a quarter of what its predecessors had and use far less energy.
But figuring out how to distribute her machine has turned out to be a far more vexing challenge. Originally, she worked with a group in Senegalâbut they changed their mission before Smith had tweaked the design for the mill. Now, sheâs collaborating with a metalsmith in Haiti, who will translate the design specifications into French, which will allow her to bring the plans to an NGO in Mali that will aid local groups in manufacturing the machine.
For her screenless hammer mill, Smith became the first woman ever to win an MIT-Lemelson Student Prize. Past recipients of the high-profile award for inventing include David Levy, who patented not only the smallest keyboard in the world but also a surgical technique that speeds the splicing of severed arteries.
Smith has a rather tortured relationship with prizes. When I asked her about being named Peace Corps Volunteer of the Year while she was in Botswanaâbeating out 2,500 peopleâshe offered up whimsical logic to explain why she didnât deserve it,
something to do with a batch of brownies. Nor does she take her science awards too seriously. âWinning the Lemelson was helpful. Some people changed their attitude toward me after I won,â she says, and leaves the rest hanging.
Smith, 41, has no kids, no car, no retirement plan, and no desire for a PhD. Her official title: instructor. Her life is like one of her inventions, portable and off-the-grid. âIâm doing exactly what I want to be doing. Why would I spend six years to get a PhD to be in the position Iâm in now but with a title after my name? MIT loves that Iâm doing this work. The support is there. So I donât worry.â It was a good thing that she won the B.F. Goodrich award in 1999, she says, because back then she was stretching a three-month graduate-student stipend to last for a year, and didnât know how sheâd pay her rent. The $7,500 came just in time.
Likewise, the inventors who most inspire her will never strike it rich. âThere are geniuses in Africa, but theyâre not getting the press,â she says. She gushes about Mohammed Bah Abba, a Nigerian teacher who came up with the pot-within-a-pot system. With nothing more than a big terra-cotta bowl, a little pot, some sand and water, Abba created a refrigeratorâthe rig uses evaporation rather than electricity to keep vegetables at 40 degrees.
Innovations that target the poorest of the poor are most effective when they have a certain no-duh quality about themâas soon as you hear an explanation of the way the thingamajig works, you canât believe that it took human beings so long to figure it out.
Smith, of course, aims to design such hidden-in-plain-sight tools and deliver them to the needy. But she also nurses a much grander ambition: to redefine invention itself. To this end, she has co-founded the IDEAS award at MIT; students work with a nonprofit group to solve a problem for the disenfranchised. Last yearâs winners, for instance, included a team that put together a kit for detecting land mines, so that farmers in places like Zimbabwe no longer have to improvise with hoes and rakes when they tap the ground to see whether it might explode.
Success in the IDEAS competition, as well as in the kind of design that Smith pursues, requires humility, because your
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