Response to PPEO

Even before reading the first two chapters of Poor People’s Energy Outlook I believed for a fact that access to energy improved people’s lifestyles.  In the 21^st century it is hard to fathom why people still spend hours on tasks such as milling, grinding, and de-husking that could be completed by machinery in a matter of minutes.  The extent to which people’s lives are unnecessarily difficult became clear through the discussion in chapter two of Poor People’s Energy Outlook.  With limited or no access to a source of energy, the time required to complete the most mundane tasks, like washing laundry detract significantly from the opportunities available to make a living.  A day spent under limited hours of operation where large portions of time are allocated to simple tasks is inefficient.  The access to energy and the implementation of energy in communities that suffer from this inefficiency can significantly improve the quality of life for residents by expanding employment and educational opportunities.  Agriculture dominates the economies of many developing nations, and provides direct evidence about how energy can influence the success of an industry; access to energy has the ability to not only increase the product yield, but also improve the quality of the final product, enabling it to be sold at a higher price.  However, I believe that the most influential asset of access to energy lies in the ability to develop small-scale economies, which the text referred to as MSEs.  To expand the economies of developing countries having access to successful service, manufacture, and production-based activities help to expose citizens to opportunities beyond agriculture. 

            The clear benefits to having energy are overwhelming; however, the poverty in which many citizens of developing nations are caught erects barriers to obtaining reliable energy sources.  Simply completing every-day tasks use up all available hours of daylight, making it nearly impossible to spend time learning about or developing sources of energy.  To conclude, it becomes apparent by the end of the text that the most reliable and plausible sources of energy in developing countries are also the most innovative and cleanest.  The prospect of such incredible progress by 2030 is both exciting and very encouraging. 

Experience designing & building a sharps container

The experience of designing and building a sharps container provided an opportunity to directly implement the engineering design process.  Initially presented with a need for a reliable mechanism to properly dispose of sharp objects, our first step in brainstorming plausible designs was to define the problem and understand our design parameters.  The sharps container would serve as a place where we could throw away sharp objects safely, never endangering anyone who would be taking out the trash our handling the container in the future.  When the container becomes full, it will be added to the trash can, so the container its self should not have sharp edges that could potentially cause a trash bag to rip.  The last design parameter to consider before we began the brainstorming process was the materials we would have to build with.  Our containers were to be made out of only cardboard and hot glue.  The rugged nature of cardboard gives any design an element of structural integrity, which is a clear advantage in building a sharps container; however, cardboard is not a very flexible material and thus limits the variety of possible designs. 

During our brainstorming process, we came up with a plethora of designs that were a variety of shapes and included a range of features.  The most basic design was a rectangular box with a small slit in the top to allow someone to easily dispose of a sharp blade without needing to do anything to open the box.  As our brainstorming process continued, we came up with many more shapes, including a circular container that would be easy to throw in the trash once it became full.  The one element of the rectangular box that needed the most improvement was the top opening.  We did not feel it was safe to have an uncovered slit in the box, so we developed a “switch.”  Our switch would simply be a piece of cardboard you would pull to uncover the slit in the box, dispose of the sharp object, and then push the piece of cardboard back over the hole to eliminate the danger of an open hole in the box.  In the brainstorming process, we found ourselves spending too much time thinking about the logistics of constructing a switch.   Taking elements from our best design shape and switch apparatus, every member of our group had a clear and unified idea of what our final product would be.

Actually designing the sharps container was relatively simple.  The cardboard piece we chose already had creases that we chose to use for edges.   However, we accidently created a base that was too small and had to attach extra cardboard to ensure that there would be no holes in the box where sharps could fall out.  To create a switch, we took two pieces of cardboard and glued one on top of another so that the top one was hanging out slightly over the bottom, and made two of these contraptions.  We then placed one long piece of cardboard in the middle of the two.  We glued the two double-stacked cardboard pieces to the top of the box, positioning them over a small rectangular slit.

We did not complete the box, however, the semi-final product appears to be structurally sound, but if we were to construct another container, I think we should take into consideration the necessary size of the container.  Given the size of the sharps we will be disposing, and the size of the container we designed, it will take a very long time to fill, so in the interest of efficiency, we should have built a smaller container.