full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Amy Smith: Simple designs to save a life

Unscramble the Blue Letters


(Laughter)

And in fact, if you look closely, right here you can see it says, "US pcaee Corps." As it turns out, there actually wasn't any waste paper in this village. And while it was a good use of government paperwork for this volunteer to bring it back with him to his vlgalie, it was 800 kilometers away. And so we thought perhaps there might be a better way to come up with an alternative cooking fuel.

What we wanted to do is we wanted to make a fuel that used something that was readily available on the local level. You see these all over Haiti as well. They're small-scale sugar mlils. And the watse product from them after you extract the juice from the sugarcane is cealld "bagasse." It has no other use. It has no nutritional value, so they don't feed it to the animals. It just sits in a pile near the sugar mill until eventually they burn it. What we wntead to do was we wanted to find a way to harness this waste resource and turn it into a fuel that would be something that polpee could elasiy cook with, something like charcoal. So over the next couple of years, students and I worked to develop a process.

Open Cloze


(Laughter)

And in fact, if you look closely, right here you can see it says, "US _____ Corps." As it turns out, there actually wasn't any waste paper in this village. And while it was a good use of government paperwork for this volunteer to bring it back with him to his _______, it was 800 kilometers away. And so we thought perhaps there might be a better way to come up with an alternative cooking fuel.

What we wanted to do is we wanted to make a fuel that used something that was readily available on the local level. You see these all over Haiti as well. They're small-scale sugar _____. And the _____ product from them after you extract the juice from the sugarcane is ______ "bagasse." It has no other use. It has no nutritional value, so they don't feed it to the animals. It just sits in a pile near the sugar mill until eventually they burn it. What we ______ to do was we wanted to find a way to harness this waste resource and turn it into a fuel that would be something that ______ could ______ cook with, something like charcoal. So over the next couple of years, students and I worked to develop a process.

Solution


  1. peace
  2. easily
  3. called
  4. people
  5. waste
  6. wanted
  7. village
  8. mills

Original Text


(Laughter)

And in fact, if you look closely, right here you can see it says, "US Peace Corps." As it turns out, there actually wasn't any waste paper in this village. And while it was a good use of government paperwork for this volunteer to bring it back with him to his village, it was 800 kilometers away. And so we thought perhaps there might be a better way to come up with an alternative cooking fuel.

What we wanted to do is we wanted to make a fuel that used something that was readily available on the local level. You see these all over Haiti as well. They're small-scale sugar mills. And the waste product from them after you extract the juice from the sugarcane is called "bagasse." It has no other use. It has no nutritional value, so they don't feed it to the animals. It just sits in a pile near the sugar mill until eventually they burn it. What we wanted to do was we wanted to find a way to harness this waste resource and turn it into a fuel that would be something that people could easily cook with, something like charcoal. So over the next couple of years, students and I worked to develop a process.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
cooking fuel 6
cow dung 3
cooking fires 2
cleaner burning 2
million deaths 2
alternative cooking 2
sticky porridge 2
charcoal briquettes 2
health impacts 2
wood charcoal 2
fetching water 2
poor farmers 2


Important Words


  1. alternative
  2. animals
  3. bring
  4. burn
  5. called
  6. charcoal
  7. closely
  8. cook
  9. cooking
  10. corps
  11. couple
  12. develop
  13. easily
  14. eventually
  15. extract
  16. fact
  17. feed
  18. find
  19. fuel
  20. good
  21. government
  22. haiti
  23. harness
  24. juice
  25. kilometers
  26. laughter
  27. level
  28. local
  29. mill
  30. mills
  31. nutritional
  32. paper
  33. paperwork
  34. peace
  35. people
  36. pile
  37. process
  38. product
  39. readily
  40. resource
  41. sits
  42. students
  43. sugar
  44. sugarcane
  45. thought
  46. turn
  47. turns
  48. village
  49. volunteer
  50. wanted
  51. waste
  52. worked
  53. years