full transcript

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

Unscramble the Blue Letters

About four years ago, I took a team of students down to Haiti and we worked with Peace crops volunteers there. This is one such volunteer and this is a device that he had bluit in the village where he worked. And the idea was that you could take waste paper; you could csopmres it and make briquettes that could be used for fuel. But this device was very slow. So our engineering students went to work on it and with some very simple changes, they were able to tirple the throughput of this device. So you could imagine they were very excited about it. And they took the briquettes back to MIT so that they could test them. And one of the things that they found was they didn't burn. So it was a little discouraging to the sndettus.

Open Cloze

About four years ago, I took a team of students down to Haiti and we worked with Peace _____ volunteers there. This is one such volunteer and this is a device that he had _____ in the village where he worked. And the idea was that you could take waste paper; you could ________ it and make briquettes that could be used for fuel. But this device was very slow. So our engineering students went to work on it and with some very simple changes, they were able to ______ the throughput of this device. So you could imagine they were very excited about it. And they took the briquettes back to MIT so that they could test them. And one of the things that they found was they didn't burn. So it was a little discouraging to the ________.

Solution

  1. corps
  2. built
  3. compress
  4. triple
  5. students

Original Text

About four years ago, I took a team of students down to Haiti and we worked with Peace Corps volunteers there. This is one such volunteer and this is a device that he had built in the village where he worked. And the idea was that you could take waste paper; you could compress it and make briquettes that could be used for fuel. But this device was very slow. So our engineering students went to work on it and with some very simple changes, they were able to triple the throughput of this device. So you could imagine they were very excited about it. And they took the briquettes back to MIT so that they could test them. And one of the things that they found was they didn't burn. So it was a little discouraging to the students.

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. briquettes
  2. built
  3. burn
  4. compress
  5. corps
  6. device
  7. discouraging
  8. engineering
  9. excited
  10. fuel
  11. haiti
  12. idea
  13. imagine
  14. mit
  15. peace
  16. simple
  17. slow
  18. students
  19. team
  20. test
  21. throughput
  22. triple
  23. village
  24. volunteer
  25. volunteers
  26. waste
  27. work
  28. worked
  29. years