What problem would you like to fix to make the world better place?

CEans,

Inspiration to start this thread comes from watching the following video -

#-Link-Snipped-#

Read the article -> #-Link-Snipped-#

There are HELL LOT of problems in the world for engineers to fix. What ONE problem you'd like to fix - and how?

Replies

  • Kaustubh Katdare
    Kaustubh Katdare
    I request each one of you to watch the video and see how simple design can prove helpful to a huge bunch of people.
  • Lock-Os
    Lock-Os
    Well, not quite sure about a design, but one very simple cheep way to limit the world's problems is to not have babies.

    Less growth-> Less humans -> More control over problems, smaller scale.

    ...

    Alright, in the most likely case that people for whatever reason what to continue to make more babies, I guess pretty much anything that reduces waste or energy usage is going to be the primary goal. Global scale salvaging of old parts and recycling of older materials comes to mind as a first major step, with the creation of a network specifically meant only for information regarding spare parts across many buyers.

    Other than that, maybe encouraging people to buy and stay in older homes might help cut down the impact of newer home construction. In fact, the construction industry could even still stay employed my shifting to renovating and updating older homes. I know of a lot of older homes out near our city that all they need is a bit of work to bring them up to date and they can be even nicer than newer homes that are now being built.

    Ah, how about something that can speed up walking or make it less strenuous? It's hard to get anywhere around here without a car due to all the hills and the lack of sidewalks, not to mention that the nearest stores are about 2-3 miles away from the homes. Of course, that doesn't begin to cover the winter snow and ice and the summer heat. Even if we could walk, coming back with all those groceries and stuff would make the return trip worse, and the overall time to complete the shopping trip would be way to much.

    My idea would be to use magnets or springs to spread out the pressure from walking on the hard roads, and try to use motors to assist in powering the leg joints to help move over the longer distances faster.

    Of course, for those who need speed and can't walk two miles up and down hills without needing to rest, the next best thing would be to remove all unneeded cargo form the car. That being said, I noticed that most new vans have the seats fold down instead of being removed.

    An idea I had to save energy would be to run the A/C off of solar power. It usually gets above 80 when the sun is out, so using solar cells to run the A/C could also be an automatic shut off switch when it gets to hot. Also running a air pump from the attic and upper parts of the buildings where hot air raises to the colder basement to heat it could help regulate the overall temperature of the home.

    In the end though, I think that the best thing we all can do to make the world a better place is to make all of ourselves better. I know that sounds cheep, but really, it's true. The less problems people overall cause, the less problems everyone has to deal with.
  • Anil Jain
    Anil Jain
    The_Big_K
    I request each one of you to watch the video and see how simple design can prove helpful to a huge bunch of people.

    I would like to design a shoe... seems strange !!!

    The main motivation I had behind this is sports, while playing different sports people do feel problems at times. Like for a badminton player , he need to be on his toes and need to jump.. stretch a lot. Some times wrong size shoe, or wrong design shoe may lead to big injuries.

    Although there are a lot of brands - technological shoes available in the market, but they are very costly.

    I am working with a local shoe company to make it much cheaper and with good design. I am studying the pressure points while playing, general foot prints, weight ratio while jumping, friction coefficient, Air cut, and a lot of other parameters during design.

    I am hoping that with continuing our routine life I would be able to design this shoe by year end.

    😁 Crazy
  • Ashraf HZ
    Ashraf HZ
    Lock-Os
    Well, not quite sure about a design, but one very simple cheep way to limit the world's problems is to not have babies.

    Less growth-> Less humans -> More control over problems, smaller scale.
    Well.. what we need is more babies who end up being engineers, than anything else πŸ˜‰

    Lock-Os
    Other than that, maybe encouraging people to buy and stay in older homes might help cut down the impact of newer home construction. In fact, the construction industry could even still stay employed my shifting to renovating and updating older homes. I know of a lot of older homes out near our city that all they need is a bit of work to bring them up to date and they can be even nicer than newer homes that are now being built.
    You have a good point. Unfortunately in many other countries, the problem is more people are migrating to cities coupled the growing population of the urbanites. Theres just simple not enough existing houses to cope with this influx. I suppose, along with renovating existing houses, new ones should be constructed in such a way as to use environmentally friendly materials, construction methods (I've seen architects converting cargo containers into studio apartments), reduce energy consumption, use etc.. which leads to your next point:

    An idea I had to save energy would be to run the A/C off of solar power. It usually gets above 80 when the sun is out, so using solar cells to run the A/C could also be an automatic shut off switch when it gets to hot. Also running a air pump from the attic and upper parts of the buildings where hot air raises to the colder basement to heat it could help regulate the overall temperature of the home.
    I'm starting a solar project at my house soon. The keys are to find an automatic way to reduce energy consumption (such as switching off lights after a time, etc) and explicitly/visually show energy consumption of appliances around the house. Doing so would close the gap between energy generation from solar and energy consumption by humans πŸ˜€ Unfortunately, you still need quite a large array of P.V cells to run things like A/C, which is a power hogger. I suppose fans would be a good start.

    crazyboy
    I am working with a local shoe company to make it much cheaper and with good design. I am studying the pressure points while playing, general foot prints, weight ratio while jumping, friction coefficient, Air cut, and a lot of other parameters during design.
    Awesome, good luck with that! Make sure you design one for basketball. I'll definitely order it! If its labelled "CrazyEngineers" of course πŸ˜‰
  • Anil Jain
    Anil Jain
    ash
    Awesome, good luck with that! Make sure you design one for basketball. I'll definitely order it! If its labelled "CrazyEngineers" of course πŸ˜‰

    I am happy ... booking started 😁, 😁 ,😁 Its not for free...

    -Crazy
  • gohm
    gohm
    hunger,

    Logistics and usage of the world food supply needs to be much more efficient. Every year a surplus of food is thrown away that could feed all the starving people elsewhere. All because of subsidies or a low market share of the goods. Sad to know there are piles of corn or wheat in the US and Europe left to rot when there are so many hungry people.

    Next would be a cheap, light, small temporary shelter that could be assembled and transported by 1 person. The design and material of the structure would allow for the safe usage of a coleman type heater. These could be used as improved shelter for homeless replacing fabric or cardboard made structures that do not hold heat, protect from the elements, etc.

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