PEE-Power Invention...

Hello All,

Yesterday, I saw a story which blew my mind. Its the account of four young Nigerian girls who looked at the electricity problem in Nigerian and created an unusual solution - A URINE-POWERED GENERATOR...Yes, you heard right, URINE. 

Dear friends, meet Duro-Aina Adebola aged 14, Akindele Abiola (14), Faleke Oluwatoyin (14) and Bello Eniola (15), students from the Chemistry laboratory of Doregos Private Academy, a secondary school in Lagos, Nigeria. 

Adebola recounts that previously she had read online about nine members of a family who died from a generator's carbon monoxide fumes. This made her think about what she could do to provide a safer alternative source of energy.

"I was sad about how people died trying to provide electricity for themselves, trying to make life better" - Duro-Aina Adebola

In 2012, she teamed up with her three friends to help find a solution to a recurring problem. They decided to design a safe urine-powered generator to create an alternative access to electricity.

For the science-oriented readers, this process you may understand:

o   Urine is put into an electrolytic cell, which separates out the hydrogen.

o   The hydrogen goes into a water filter for purification, which then gets pushed into the gas cylinder.

o   The gas cylinder pushes hydrogen into a cylinder of liquid borax, which is used to remove the moisture from the hydrogen gas.

o   This purified hydrogen gas is pushed into the generator.

Okay.

So, there you have it, an invention out of what we would typically waste.

Kudos girls!!!

So, till 12 Noon next Tuesday, let me run off to go think of what I could innovate out of ……… J

Bye People!!!

Sources

http://www.girleffect.org/news/2013/02/girl-power-nigerian-teens-invent-urine-powered-generator/

http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewdepaula/2012/11/08/teens-create-a-way-to-use-urine-as-fuel/

Laila Indira Alva - The 10-year-Old who offered to help her country

When your country faces a certain downturn, what do you do to help?

Below is the story of a little Indian girl who sized-up her economy and offered a little help. Please read:

In September 2013, when the Indian government was struggling to control the rupee's massive slide against the dollar, a worried 10-year-old girl, Laila Indira Alva sent a $20 bill to the country's Central Bank offering to help the economy.

Read the story here - (Source: BBC News) 

Raghuram Rajan took over as the governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on 4 September 2013 - the following day Laila Indira Alva sent him a letter.

"I have heard about the crisis our economy is facing on the news. I have also heard about the fall of the rupee with respect to the dollar," she wrote.

Laila, who lives in Gurgaon, an affluent Delhi suburb, is not someone who usually spends time worrying about the economy - like most 10-year-olds, she likes playing with friends and other activities such as reading, singing, playing the guitar, swimming and athletics.

But last summer, bad news about the economy made the headlines every day - the manufacturing sector had slowed down, the rupee was continuously sliding against the dollar and India's current account deficit was growing wider by the day.

As her parents take several daily newspapers, Laila saw all these stories of impending doom and grew alarmed.

"I knew the economy was weak because of inflation and corruption. I read about it in the newspapers and I heard my parents talk about it at dinner and I heard about it on the news. That's the only thing everyone was talking about."

Laila was worried that "people won't have enough money to make a living and everyone will suffer and everyone will become poor," she says.

Her mother Pria Somaiah Alva says she and her husband often talk to Laila and her 13-year-old brother about what's in the news.

"Last September, we were sitting around the table, my husband and I were discussing the dollar rate. And Mr Rajan was in the news, he was going to take over as the bank's governor so somewhere how the bank controls the economy came up," she says.

The next day, after returning from school, Laila asked her mother if she could write a letter to the RBI governor because "maybe he can help the economy".

"I said 'go ahead, you're a kid, you can do what you want'," Pria says.

"Dr Raghuram Rajan, please bring in some new ideas that will improve our economy. I want people to come to India and not to think that it's corrupt and a dump!" Laila wrote in the letter which has recently been published in her school magazine.

She also decided to include a $20 bill her parents had given her during a family holiday in Israel a year ago because she thought "the country needs it more than I do".

"Many people say it starts with little and then it becomes big, so I thought that my $20 would be a little. But I thought if people had the right thought in their minds, then they could make it big. I thought that everyone will contribute a little bit to help our economy and India will progress," says Laila.

About 10 days later, an official looking envelope arrived, addressed to Laila. She was shocked to discover that it was from the bank governor himself.

"I am deeply touched by your kind gesture," he wrote. "I am aware this is a challenging time for the country and I have no doubt the economy will emerge stronger."

The envelope also carried the $20 bill she had sent.

"I am returning the $20 note you had sent with the assurance that we have adequate foreign exchange reserves in RBI to manage the situation," Rajan wrote and invited her to visit him next time she was in Mumbai.

Laila says she was "really surprised" by the response.

"I thought it was common to write a letter to the RBI governor, I thought he won't really read it and he'll just ask someone else to write back."

Laila was not happy to get her money back though and thought that "it was mean of him not to take it," she says. But her parents explained that "there are different ways in which one can help one's country".


In November, when Laila's father went to Mumbai on business, she went along with him to meet Rajan..

"She was very happy, very impressed with the RBI building. She visited the coin museum and returned laden with comics which simplify money, even for adults. But her first reaction was - Mama, he's very tall," says Pria.

"He is very tall," insists Laila. "There's a picture of both of us and he's extremely tall, he's like a giant."

At her meeting with Rajan, she asked him questions like "why can't the RBI print more money for everyone so that people aren't poor? He told me that it will lead to inflation and then he explained the whole concept".

On the wall behind his desk, there were pictures of past RBI governors, but "there was no lady governor so I was shocked and I asked him why? He said maybe you can become one some day".

So is that what she wants to do when she grows up? "Maybe, but I want to be a photographer first and then an author and then a singer, maybe someday work to become the governor of the RBI," she says.

About the $20 bill, Laila admits that at one point she thought about changing it into rupees and spending it, but now she has changed her mind.

Such Empathy. 

Please stay tuned to more exceptional stories on the blog every Tuesday. 

Until next week, Stay Happy, be at peace with yourself, your Country and with God.

Bye :)

  

Source: http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-27388104