full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Saul Griffith: Everyday inventions

Unscramble the Blue Letters


Having totally absorbed this philosophy, I started looking at a lot of problems a little differently. With the universe as a ceuotpmr, you can look at this droplet of water as having performed the camotinpouts. You set a couple of boundary conditions, like girvaty, the surface tension, density, etc., and then you press "execute," and magically, the universe produces you a perfect ball lens. So, this actually applied to the problem of — so there's a half a billion to a billion people in the world don't have access to cheap eyeglasses. So can you make a machine that could make any prescription lens very quickly on site? This is a mnaiche where you literally define a boundary condition. If it's circular, you make a spherical lens. If it's elliptical, you can make an astigmatic lens. You then put a membrane on that and you aplpy pressure — so that's part of the etxra program. And literally with only those two itnups — so, the shape of your boundary ciditonon and the pressure — you can define an iiniftne neubmr of lenses that cover the range of human refractive error, from minus 12 to plus eight diopters, up to four diopters of cylinder. And then literally, you now pour on a monomer. You know, I'll do a Julia cldihs here. This is three muneits of UV light. And you reverse the prsusree on your membrane once you've cooked it. Pop it out. I've seen this video, but I still don't know if it's going to end right.

Open Cloze


Having totally absorbed this philosophy, I started looking at a lot of problems a little differently. With the universe as a ________, you can look at this droplet of water as having performed the ____________. You set a couple of boundary conditions, like _______, the surface tension, density, etc., and then you press "execute," and magically, the universe produces you a perfect ball lens. So, this actually applied to the problem of — so there's a half a billion to a billion people in the world don't have access to cheap eyeglasses. So can you make a machine that could make any prescription lens very quickly on site? This is a _______ where you literally define a boundary condition. If it's circular, you make a spherical lens. If it's elliptical, you can make an astigmatic lens. You then put a membrane on that and you _____ pressure — so that's part of the _____ program. And literally with only those two ______ — so, the shape of your boundary _________ and the pressure — you can define an ________ ______ of lenses that cover the range of human refractive error, from minus 12 to plus eight diopters, up to four diopters of cylinder. And then literally, you now pour on a monomer. You know, I'll do a Julia ______ here. This is three _______ of UV light. And you reverse the ________ on your membrane once you've cooked it. Pop it out. I've seen this video, but I still don't know if it's going to end right.

Solution


  1. inputs
  2. childs
  3. computations
  4. pressure
  5. computer
  6. minutes
  7. condition
  8. infinite
  9. extra
  10. apply
  11. gravity
  12. number
  13. machine

Original Text


Having totally absorbed this philosophy, I started looking at a lot of problems a little differently. With the universe as a computer, you can look at this droplet of water as having performed the computations. You set a couple of boundary conditions, like gravity, the surface tension, density, etc., and then you press "execute," and magically, the universe produces you a perfect ball lens. So, this actually applied to the problem of — so there's a half a billion to a billion people in the world don't have access to cheap eyeglasses. So can you make a machine that could make any prescription lens very quickly on site? This is a machine where you literally define a boundary condition. If it's circular, you make a spherical lens. If it's elliptical, you can make an astigmatic lens. You then put a membrane on that and you apply pressure — so that's part of the extra program. And literally with only those two inputs — so, the shape of your boundary condition and the pressure — you can define an infinite number of lenses that cover the range of human refractive error, from minus 12 to plus eight diopters, up to four diopters of cylinder. And then literally, you now pour on a monomer. You know, I'll do a Julia Childs here. This is three minutes of UV light. And you reverse the pressure on your membrane once you've cooked it. Pop it out. I've seen this video, but I still don't know if it's going to end right.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
extremely simple 3
pretty interesting 3
light switches 2
neil gershenfeld 2
complex structure 2
state machines 2
air hockey 2
simple rules 2
boundary condition 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
extremely simple rules 2

Important Words


  1. absorbed
  2. access
  3. applied
  4. apply
  5. astigmatic
  6. ball
  7. billion
  8. boundary
  9. cheap
  10. childs
  11. circular
  12. computations
  13. computer
  14. condition
  15. conditions
  16. cooked
  17. couple
  18. cover
  19. cylinder
  20. define
  21. density
  22. differently
  23. diopters
  24. droplet
  25. elliptical
  26. error
  27. extra
  28. eyeglasses
  29. gravity
  30. human
  31. infinite
  32. inputs
  33. julia
  34. lens
  35. lenses
  36. light
  37. literally
  38. lot
  39. machine
  40. magically
  41. membrane
  42. minutes
  43. monomer
  44. number
  45. part
  46. people
  47. perfect
  48. performed
  49. philosophy
  50. pop
  51. pour
  52. prescription
  53. press
  54. pressure
  55. problem
  56. problems
  57. produces
  58. program
  59. put
  60. quickly
  61. range
  62. refractive
  63. reverse
  64. set
  65. shape
  66. site
  67. spherical
  68. started
  69. surface
  70. tension
  71. totally
  72. universe
  73. uv
  74. video
  75. water
  76. world