Inventor of Low Tech Fridge Wins Award 369
juju2112 writes "Mohammed Bah Abba of Nigeria won a Rolex award for his pot-in-pot invention. Here's how it works. You take a smaller pot and put it inside a larger pot. Fill the space in between them with wet sand, and cover the top with a wet cloth. When the water evaporates, it pulls the heat out with it, making the inside cold. It's a natural, cheap, easy-to-make refrigerator."
keeping beer cool (Score:5, Interesting)
Grab a clean sock, soak in water, wring out, cover teh can of beer and leave on the window sill.. LOL
Re:keeping beer cool (Score:5, Funny)
Well of course it's obvious, and everybody knows the trick, but this is a perfect example of how some people can be taken by the most outrageous nigerian scams. This time it was the Rolex award judges. Perhaps they expect 20M to be wired from some bank account in Nigeria or something...
Re:keeping beer cool (Score:4, Funny)
Re:keeping beer cool (Score:5, Funny)
Please kindly permit me to express myself to you. My name is Mohammed Bah Abba from Nigeria. I recently won money from Rolex watch company that mandated me to search for good and reliable company/individual person who can assist me to safe keep some amount of US$100,000 dollars. This fund is paid into a fixed deposit account with coded secret account number and my coded name in a bank in Europe.
Now, I am wanted by the NIGERIAN SCAMMERS who have mandated that all my assets, bank account home and abroad be confisicated to pay for their email fraud schemes.
I need trust worthy investor who can go to bank in europe to receive money either through the transfer system for certified draft in his or her name to redeposit this money in your country for good investment. If you can handle this process myself or my attorney to have meeting with you anywhere in europe to go to the bank with legal letter of administration to change beneficiary to your name as investment proxy and investor to our family investments.
This is very confidential handling if you can be able to handle it with us, I have mapped 20% for you and new fridge that not need electricity. You should contact me urgently on my email: mohammedbahabba@gmail.com.
This is 100% risk free and demands absolute secret and confidentially.
If you are being good to good I pray we succeed. respond urgently.
Mohammed Bah Abba
Re:keeping beer cool (Score:3, Funny)
As you can imagine, there were some rather late night parties and although the hotel staff had cleared out the room mini-bars as requested by the FS company, the students had sufficient intelligence to stock up from the local spermarket.
One night, however, 'Labatts Ice' bottled beer was
Re:keeping beer cool (Score:5, Funny)
This is obviously untrue.... have you ever heard of a student with a clean sock? ;-)
Re:keeping beer cool (Score:5, Informative)
If you're making a lager, you are supposed to keep it at a relatively cool temperature for an extended period of time while it
If you're not fortunate enough to have an extra fridge (with appropriate temperature regulator), or be living in a cold climate with a cool garage/basement, you can use this technique to keep it fairly cool.
Just put your carboy (or other fermenter) in a tub with a couple inches of water in it and wrap the vessel in a towel (my favorite was a thick Bugs Bunny terrycloth) with the bottom edge of the towel in the water. Just water your beer every couple of days and you're good to go.
Re:keeping beer cool (Score:3, Funny)
Rich
Re:keeping beer cool (Score:2)
Doesn't matter? (Score:3, Interesting)
If this is so blindingly obvious maybe you should have invented it and started selling low-cost refridgeration equipment in Africa. If you read up on the effects of this device you would find that young women in families that use the device are now allowed to go to school instead of being sent to the market to sell goods? Why? Because crops last longer so they don't have to sell them as soon as they pick them.
So tell those young girls that it doesn't matter. Tell the same thing to f
Re:Doesn't matter? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:keeping beer cool (Score:5, Informative)
The point is, and apparently it was novel enough an application to merit $75,000, is that this makes a dry cool space, a refrigerator, that can keep food cold, and has an enormous economic impact -- "Eggplants stay fresh for 27 days, instead of the usual three. Tomatoes and peppers last for up to three weeks" -- not just a pleasantly cool cup of water.
NB, this was reported in Time magazine in 2001 [time.com].Slashdot is keeping its fine tradition of reporting "news" years late. Expect the dupe tomrrow.
Different Interpretation (Score:5, Funny)
rolexity (Score:5, Funny)
performance parameters? (Score:4, Interesting)
anyone got any napkin-science calculations that can give us a ballpark of whats needed? i'm sure this is a simple physics equation, only i'm certainly not qualified to work out the formula
Re:performance parameters? (Score:3, Insightful)
Just like your refridgerator at home the main limitation\factor in terms of heat loss is going to be ho
Re:performance parameters? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the whole point. It doesn't retain cold, it creates cold. Put on a wet Tshirt on a chilly day and go outside. Get it? It works by heat loss, and thus that's what you're striving to accomplish. The exact opposite of the way you think of a cooler.
The whole thing works by continuous evaporation. It lasts longer in the shade, but it actually gets colder quicker if you dampen the outside and give it a bit of sun.
When the thing goes dry it has the R value of a dry paper bag, which is to say, essentially zilch. You have to keep it wet or the whole thing goes to hell, just like when that Tshirt dries out.
And as I explain in a post above the whole thing actually works better if you use an unglazed porous outside pot. Water seeps through the pot slowly, just fast enough so that the outside always feels a liiiiittle damp, but never wet, and you get the entire surface of the outside pot as cooling area. Throw a real lid on the thing instead of the damp cloth and it'll go for quite some time before you need to add water, although just how long "some time" is is highly variable, since it depends on factors like air temperature and humidity.
KFG
Re:performance parameters? (Score:3, Insightful)
That's not true. If you put it in the sun, the water will evaporate faster and more energy will be transferred, that's true. But also more energy will be added to the system in the first place, and I doubt the higher evaporation will suffice to compensate for that. Even in the best case, it will exactly compensate, not overcompensate.
Other m
Re:performance parameters? (Score:4, Funny)
If only there was somewhere to plug in that fan . . .
so how effective is it? (Score:2)
I ask because a friend of mine.. well who am I kidding, I use watercooling and this kind of thing for keeping the water cooled could be quite cool(I already use mostly open bucket evaporating, helped with 1 big fan at low speed to get rid of the heat).
(and during summer it's expected to go to 30 celsius for fuckin weeks again and no money for AC)
Re:so how effective is it? (Score:4, Funny)
You poor bastard.
Try working outside in the sun at 43 degrees on hot earthmoving equipment (with engines hot enough to melt your boots when you stand on them)
During summer I wished for "just" 30 degree weather every day.
(Annnnnnd I had to crawl on my stomach 5 miles to school every day! Uphill both ways! Down in the dust and the dirt and prickles and the bitey ants! And I *liked* it, because damnit, that was *good* compared to what some of the other kids went through!)
Re:so how effective is it? (Score:2)
You're using evaporation to cool your home? How effective is that?
For me, the most important function of an AC is that it dries the air. I'd even use AC if it would't cool the air as well... I can stand warm weather, but it's the humidity that usually comes with it, that does me in. "Yeah man, but it's a dry heat", and all that.
Evaporation would cool the house
Re:so how effective is it? (Score:2)
You're using evaporation to cool your home? How effective is that?
Where the fuck do you live? Around some of the places I grew up, evaporation was not only the cheapest way to cool your home, it was also the most pleasant because of the wetness you put in your air.
For me, the most important function of an AC is that it dries the air. I'd even use AC if it would't cool the air as well... I can stand warm weather, but it's the humidity that usually comes with it, that does me in. "Yeah man, but it's a d
Re:so how effective is it? (Score:5, Informative)
Where I live at present (Mount Isa, Queensland), just about every house and business has at least a 6000cfm evaporative air conditioner. Humidity can often get below 30%, meaning that they work particularly well. In fact, they can theoretically cool to the dew point, which if you take note of the last 72 hr readings from Mount Isa [bom.gov.au] can pull down to 10 degrees or so when it's dry.
They are of course completely fucking useless for about 3 weeks of the year when it's hot and humid and you get storms in the afternoon at 35 degrees and 90% humidity. You just sweat like a pig then, or retreat to the refrigerative airconditioner you normally keep in reserve in your bedroom.
free energy source (Score:3, Informative)
Another way to get free cooling in the summer is to have a lot of plastic pipe buried down in the yard below the surface effect heating. That's a variable that you'll have to determine, the depth, but should be easy to find out. In northern climes, it's roughly equivale
Re:so how effective is it? (Score:5, Informative)
However, during the monsoons, or rainy weather-the humidity renders them useless, as evaporation on the straw mats reduces.
Oh, and clay pots have been used in India too, for generations, for keeping water cool-though not in the way mentioned.
I'm happy for him and all but.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I'm happy for him and all but.. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I'm happy for him and all but.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Are Africans using this in droves to improve their living conditions? And if not, what does that mean? That they are stupid people who are not well suited to live in the modern world and thus do not deserve to survive? Or that we should send more humanitarian (development) aid to them? Not trolling, just honestly curious.
Re:I'm happy for him and all but.. (Score:3, Informative)
The original Rolex Award was made in 2000. What spurred the submitter was someone posting about it on a buletin board recently. I don't really object to reading about this; but it would have been much better to cite a primary source, like the the RolexAwards site which has full report [rolexawards.com] on this invention and the background.
Brilliant. (Score:4, Insightful)
Prior art anyone ?
Pot types (Score:3, Interesting)
I was thinking that perhaps it might work best if the external pot was slightly porus, to aid evaporation, but perhaps all the evaporation occurs at the top, so it doesn't make much difference.
Re:Pot types (Score:2, Insightful)
Ideally, you want the outside pot to be a good thermal insulator and the inside pot to be a good thermal conductor. That way, the heat consumed by evaporation is drawn from the contents inside rather than the outside air. Maybe a copper pot inside some sort of oversize thermos with a porous cover would be ideal...of course, such materials probably aren't available cheaply where they're using these
You're right (Score:3, Insightful)
Also in Mediterranean cultures (Score:5, Informative)
The cooling effect has been scientifically studied. Here is this article describing it [google.com] (Google-translated from Spanish).
Re:Also in Mediterranean cultures (Score:3, Insightful)
So we all know that evaperative cooling has been around for a while, but can anyone explain if this particular application has been used? This still looks novel to me.
TW
Re:Also in Mediterranean cultures (Score:3, Informative)
It's a matter of degree. This guy's invention is suitable to keep vegetables very cool for long periods of time with minimal maintenance. He could have just put some wet burlap over the vegetables kind of like your wet newspaper, but that wouldn't have been as useful to the local people as having in-place, reliable refridgeration.
Your use of evaperative cooling, like others on this thread, is very useful for your needs, but likely would not have solved the long-term food
Let me guess (Score:2)
So I expect soon he'll be creating MohamedCo and start selling rotisserie ovens on Nigerian TV?
The money (Score:5, Funny)
It's an old trick... (Score:5, Insightful)
..but maybe the difference is in the execution or something? To me, it's less important that someone might have done this before than the fact that doing it now might change peoples life to the better.
Shouldn't that be the focus of inventing new ways for doing things by the way? To improve peoples life?
This is 3 years old (Score:5, Informative)
In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
One thing before I go to sleep. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:One thing before I go to sleep. (Score:5, Funny)
How can such cruelty towards computers be tolerated!
Coolgardie Safe (Score:5, Informative)
But, cut the guy a break. The cool thing here is that he's done it with readily available local materials which is pretty much one of the key features for a real engineer. To paraphrase the old saw:
Anyone can make you an evaporative cooler for $100; this guy's done it for $1.
Nor is it a new prize. He won this in 2000! (Score:2)
Re:Coolgardie Safe (Score:2)
If so then he's losing 60 cents on each one he sells: Availability: Now (in Nigeria), for 40 a set. [time.com] But that's ok, he'll make up for it in volume.
-
Re:Coolgardie Safe (Score:3, Informative)
No, because the manufacturing cost is 30 cents [rolexawards.com].
Re:Coolgardie Safe (Score:3, Interesting)
Let's see, in my calculations $395 is a bit more than this device.
Also, the next time your in the third-world areas, see how many people can afford a $395 solar fridge. This is obviously not geared towards you.
Link to rolex awards? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Link to rolex awards? (Score:3, Informative)
The Rolex Awards website is Flash only, so don't bother going there if you don't have/want to pollute your system with that technology.
I was hoping to find out what the criteria for the award were by going to the source, and hoping that it was for making the idea available in a way they can afford to people who need it by use of appropriate technology. Unfortunately, I was frustrated by an inappropriate use of technology on the web site. Those giving the award would do well to learn from those to whom it w
Re:Link to rolex awards? (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.rolexawards.com/laureates/pdf/l a ureate0 006.pdf
This is my attempt at an excerpt:
He began by studying management sciences at Ahmadu Bello University in the town of Zaria. Equipped with a Bachelor of Science degree in business administration, he became a lecturer at the College of Business and Management Studies at Jigawa State Polytechnic in Dutse in 1990, at the same time heading the college's Student Industrial Work Experience Scheme. When not teaching, A
Obviously (Score:2, Funny)
If this guy got a $100,000 dollar award, then these guys [beerchiller.com] should get a "cool" million.
coming up next (Score:5, Funny)
A liquid, excreted from the skin when hot, whose evaporation helps to maintain an organism within a certain temperature range as well as serving to eliminate certain waste materials from the body.
This process may be, but is not necessecarily, augmented by a seperate device composed of a number of curved blades, fitted to a central hub and rotated at high speeds by an electric motor in order to create artificial air currents. some form of material support apparatus keeps the device elevated above the ground, either by providing a stand or attaching to the ceiling of the room, or by mounting the device inside some form of automotive vehicle. Also, a guard device may be used to keep sundry items from coming in contact with the blades.
Re:coming up next (Score:2)
Re:coming up next (Score:2)
I think you meant to put it in patent-speak:
Millk bottle cooler (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Millk bottle cooler (Score:2)
Water (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Water (Score:5, Insightful)
--
Re:Water (Score:3, Insightful)
Nice , but (Score:2)
Summary : Ammonia bonded to salt crystals in a closed system is driven off by the heat from a solar reflector, condensed to liquid via a coil of pipe in a drum of water and stored in pressure vessel in an insulated box. Remove the heat, and the ammonia liquid boils off and is recombined with the salt, and can freeze about 10lbs of ice in every 3-4 hour cycle.
This has the advantage over the evaporative system in that i
CONGRATULATION, You have WON a ROLEX WATCH. (Score:2)
Actually this is a bit like some art - some dude publishes a 1000s of years old idea, and is recognised for it. So he's basically being rewarded for publishing the idea, not having it. Sort of like some art - you look at it and think, who on Earth would do that ? And then they sell it for $1000s, and then you think to yourself, "I'm an idiot", I could have done that !
Most pioneer types had similar stuff (Score:4, Informative)
He had replaced the box after the one from his grandfather finally rusted to pieces after just over 75 years of continual use.
Truckers in South Africa also used to also carry a water bag in a wet sand filled canvas bag outside their trucks to provide a constant source of cool water.
I think the principle is probably much older than this, probably going back to the first person realising that the wind chilled him more after taking a dip in a lake that when he was dry.
Re:Most pioneer types had similar stuff (Score:2)
How it works... (Score:5, Informative)
You'd be surprised at the massive amount of energy that a liquid-to-vapor phase change can carry away. In fact, six times more energy is needed to turn one molecule of 100C liquid water to one molecule of 100C vapor water than is needed to heat liquid water from 0 to 100C!
Boiling, which is a similar phenomenon, is the most efficient way to transfer heat known to science.
Sig--
1. My girlfriend
2. You
3. ???
4. Profit!
WTF? (Score:2)
Standard implementation (Score:2)
Read this several years ago.
Too complicated by far! (Score:3, Interesting)
Hmm (Score:5, Informative)
The idea that an evaporating liquid draws heat from its surroundings is nothing new.
Basically, the difference between a liquid and a gas is how much the molecules are vibrating: if the vibration is weak, the molecules' affinity for each other bonds them loosely together so they follow one another around, assuming the shape of a container but occupying a definite volume. If the vibration is stronger than that attractive force, then they just fly apart, occupying the whole of the container and exerting a pressure on it. Heating, of course, makes the molecules vibrate more strongly, which is why liquids turn into gases when heated.
If you try to force more molecules into a space, eventually they will be forced into colliding with one another often enough to form a liquid. This is what goes on in a cigarette lighter: there are just too many molecules to behave as a perfect gas, so some of them are forced together and behave as a liquid.
Pressure, volume and {absolute -- i.e. in Kelvins, 0C = 273.15K} temperature are related by the equation: P * V = n * R * T, where n = number of moles of gas and R is the Ideal Gas Constant. No gas is truly ideal, because the assumption is that the individual molecules have neither mass nor volume; however, the relationship holds reasonably well in real life, only deviating sharply around the point where liquefaction actually occurs.
A fridge or air conditioner has three main parts: the compressor, the condenser and the evaporator. The refrigerant gas is first compressed. Pressure goes up and volume goes down, so temperature also goes up. It is then pumped around some pipes at the back of the fridge {or in the outdoor part of the air conditioner; portable units don't have an outdoor section, so the condenser is cooled by blowing air over it and out of a window through a length of flexi-flue -- uncouple this and you've got yourself a de-humidifier} to allow it to cool down. Once the refrigerant has cooled to ambient temperature and become a liquid again, it is forced out by its own pressure through a tiny hole into a larger space {the evaporator - usually the outer jacket of the icemaking compartment of a fridge, or the coil of pipe in the indoor part of an air conditioner that gets covered with ice crystals}. Now the pressure is not sufficient to keep the refrigerant molecules together, so it becomes a gas again. Pressure goes down, volume goes up, so to satisfy the laws of physics, temperature must go down.
The compressor's intake draws the low-pressure refrigerant out of the evaporator and the whole thing starts again. {In an air con., the whole process has to be stopped every so often to allow the accumulated ice to melt off the surface of the evaporator. Plumbed-in units have a permanent drain, portable ones have a tank which needs emptying periodically. The meltwater is pure enough to be used anywhere demineralised water is required.}
You can also get a terracotta butter cooler which works on this principle: the inside of the tray and dome are salt-glazed, the outsides are unglazed. You soak the whole thing in water, which then evaporates slowly from the outer surface, keeping the butter usefully cold {not rock solid, but not runny either}.
Invention ? (Score:5, Interesting)
I second the people posting that its around 4000 year old method.
I'm from India and I first I read about it when I was around 10 year old (I'm 23) in a popular social magazine (called 'Dharmyuga', the most popular magazine of its time). It had schematics identical to those offered by this fellow, and yes, they mentioned it to be "very old technique". My dad still has collection of old issues of this mag and I'm sure I can fish out the article mentioning this 'invention'.
Can't these fellows do at least a google query to verify that whatever they're offering money for is indeed an invention ??
Several docs with feedback [google.com]
Re:Invention ? (Score:3, Informative)
this is how much cooling you get... (Score:5, Informative)
Evaporative cooling has been use in kitchens for millenia, although it is usually used to keep water cool (unglazed pots). For storage of more than a few hours, a cellar, solid stone building, or cave is less hassle. You easily get guaranteed 70F or below long-term storage in most regions of the world, and if you are architecturally clever, you can actually get lower-than average-long-term temperatures without any maintenance or needing to re-fill water into little jugs.
One that can even make ice (Score:5, Informative)
Don't do him any favors (Score:3, Interesting)
Someone correct me if I'm wrong here, but that's part of the problem with entreprenuership in a lot of African nations. As soon as you start to get somewhere, people start crawling out of the woodwork looking for handouts as part of your family, and it's against traditions to not give the assistance to them. That's why nepotism is such a problem. If you are elected to a position of power you pretty much have to hire your relatives.
I'm assuming this based on the following story: I dated a (great) woman for about two years who lived in Rwanda for 18 months. While there for the state department, she taught a native how to manage his small furniture business and turn a respectable profit. Once he started making enough gains to expand and have a chance at doing more than just surviving off his work (expand his shop, hire more carpenters, open a real store, etc.) she learned that his family threw some serious pressure at him to buck her advice and give the money to them.
So he never was able to make a business to sustain his family because they didn't understand he needed to pay people working for him to bring even more in. Don't spend the seed money.
Wow, no one gets it. (Score:3, Insightful)
This is about how someone came up with an easily packaged low-tech device that will help millions of people. Sure, it's obvious, but he's doing something that will actually help people.
How cold? (Score:3, Interesting)
What is new about this is: (Score:5, Informative)
The real "invention" here is his efforts toward making a positive change in the villager's lifestyle. Obviously if someone is awarding $100,000 dollars there is more to it. You folks should do some more research before you nock it!! He plans to use the $100,000 to distibute the pots more widely and to increase his education efforts!
Learn before you look like a fool:
http://www.varaprasad.htmlplanet.com/custo
Re:This is New? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is New? (Score:5, Funny)
=Smidge=
Re:This is New? (Score:5, Interesting)
The main reason for any award that this "device" would be eligible for is of course its social impact. If a simple arrangement of clay pots can prolong the life of perishable food in areas that don't have our "off the shelf from the supermarket perceptual abundance", it's got my vote. If it can drive more kids to school rather than have them vending out on the streets, it should have your vote too.
You might be well right when you say that this is an old invention. But I would caution against demeriting it simpy on account of that. Once again, clearly, the impact of the invention's application counts just as much as (maybe even more than) the invention itself.
One more example of applied commonplace knowledge -- Freeplay radio [tldm.org]. Just how long have we known of windup springs and their potential energy???
Re:This is New? (Score:3, Funny)
"So what was this used for?"
"Were not really sure, but we think they kept their weed in it...."
Re:This is New? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is New? (Score:3, Insightful)
Edison did not invent the lightbulb, he only perfected a lab curiousity so that it was feasable for everday use.
Ford did not invent the auto assembly line (Randsom E Olds did that) Ford improved upon it where he could mass produce cars and provide it to the masses at an affordable cost.
Did this guy invent something new? Probably not, but I think the people who will be using it will thank him for having it in their house.
Invetion is fine, but without application
Re:This is New? (Score:5, Funny)
Hmm.. my inbox tells me they have milions of dollars just lying around there..
Re:This is New? (Score:5, Informative)
No, not particularly. It's a very old trick to make cold water by putting it in an unglazed clay pot, which is porous, and allowing evaporation of the seepage to draw the heat out. I learned it from Mexican Indians 35 years ago and it was effective enough to make water cold enough to make your teeth hurt even in the tropical rainforest. It works even better in the desert where evaporation happens quicker due to the low humidity.
European bicycle racers have been wrapping their water bottles with a damp cloth covering to keep the water chilled for decades as well.
Until a couple of weeks ago I thought everybody knew you could keep cool by wearing a dampened T-shirt, and then I learned that the Pardy's, those paragons of sea lore and self-sufficiency without electrical power, had only just learned this trick. .
Wrap something damp around a pot, as is done with the water bottle, and the air inside the pot chills, as does anything inside the pot. Wrap a porous outer layer around the damp cloth, such as another pot, and you moderate the evaporation rate.
This "invention" seems to miss a few of the finer points of the device, thus requiring the damp cloth over the two pots. You need to use an unglazed pot for the outer one. Then you can even put a real cover on the thing and it still works. Better. Longer. Some sort of batting works better as a wick than sand, although sand will do and is certainly freely available.
I don't mean to denigrate this man's intellectual accomplishment. If he thought it up on his own from basic principles the intellectual feat is equal to the first man that did it.
But it really does amount to the reinvention of folklore that exists in one place in some other place.
And the people from Rolex think of it as a new invention because they are modern, mechanistic folk who don't know how to go about living without modern power and machines or what people who do not have such devices already know about doing so.
The Zapotec Indians I lived among for some months knew lots of tricks that had been handed down over thousands of years for surviving with nothing but what you could make with your own two hands. I've got a poncho just about eight feet from me right now that was woven by them on a backstrap loom they made themselves, with wool from sheep they had grown themselves, sheared themselves, carded themselves, spun themselves, using weaving techniques their ancestors had invented themselves (even though many people throughout the world had invented the same thing). Living with them for a few months taught me more about how to think about living than any number of survival books and hiking expeditions had ever done.
Many of the things they did appeared as magic to me, because I was just an ignorant Americano and their technology was sufficiently advanced. .
I was in Mexico in the late 60s (that's where I first heard Abbey Road). The Zapotecs are starting to lose it too now as they begin to sell their weaving to touristas so that they may buy Tshirts and blue jeans. Most of them buy neon colored acrylic yarn from the store now instead of using their own lovely wool, because the Americanos really like the bright "native" colors instead of the natural tones of wool.
Well, their lot will certainly improve with more money at their disposal, and I certainly won't begrudge them that. Doctors cost serious money no matter how "self-sufficient" they are, and they coul
Re:This is New? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is New? (Score:3, Funny)
I am going to bring my Xbox there, and "invent" gaming.
Re:This is New? (Score:5, Funny)
(:
Re:This is New? (Score:3, Funny)
1. this is an opportunity
2. PLEASE WRITE THIS INFORMATION DOWN!!
3. PUBLISH IT! so we ALL can
4. profit!! from it.
Re:Okay Grandpa Simpson (Score:3, Funny)
That reminds me of the time I was mucking out stalls in exchange for riding time, because shitkicker is actually the sort of boot we wore to do it. And people who wore them were then shitkickers too. The w
Re:Aborigine technology? (Score:5, Insightful)
I never ceases to amaze me how modern people assume "primitive" means stupid. And that would just be primitive by our standards of technology. Doesn't say anything about thier level of mathmatics or astronomy. There are plenty of amazing things done in history without the use of electricity or modern metals.
For instance the Romans would move water hundreds of miles without the use of any pumps. Only gravity would be used. There is once site in Spain where the Romans used water to tear down a mountain to mine it. Something we would use explosives and heavy machines to do.
I esp. love the nut jobs who assume that because the people of Egypt didn't have bulldozers and crains they couldn't have built the pyramids. Instead it was built by aliens or people from Atlantis. Which is all poppycock, the Egyptians had a prefectly "primitive" way of doing it, we just forgot what it was.
Primitive is relative, but it doesn't mean stupid.
Re:This is New? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Brilliant! (Score:2)
However, it would be inter
This works the other way too (Score:5, Interesting)
Put a few buckets of water in your food storage room, and as long as the water is not frozen, the food in the room will not freeze either. Just before the water freezes, replace the buckets with liquid water. Repeat as necessary, and the food will not freeze.
Air conditioning with wet hay bale (Score:5, Interesting)
I doubt those people have the straw/grass/etc. to waste on A/C, though.
Re:Brilliant! (Score:2)
The only major advancement in refrigeration recently has been the Peltier junction.
Man, learn something new every day. Thanks for this rather offhand reference, I'd never heard of a peltier junction and thought the only way to cool something was with either swamp cooling (what the article is about, blah) or heat pumps. It may be "common knowledge" to the rest of you lot, but it's new to me. ;)
Re:Brilliant! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Brilliant! (Score:3, Interesting)
"It's a more or less obvious solution for anyone who knows some rudimentary thermodynamics"
Very cute: but I'll tell you that stuff like this isn't even totally obvious for people who know quite advanced thermodynamics. Sure, it helps to know some laws, some integration/differentation techniques. But to actually apply it in such a simple and effective way is a whole different kettle of fish entirely.
An idea isn't worth much without application of that idea. And I'd wager that you (a
Re:This is kind of stupid... (Score:5, Informative)
The article didn't mention the effectiveness of the device. Say, on a hot summer day, RH of 80%, if we keep the pot under the shade, could we achieve 15 degree C. A temperature ideal for beer.