Kind: captions
Language: en
[Music]
we live in a built
World engineering and Technology built
upon Innovations and inventions
stretching back thousands of years some
of our Creations like machines boost our
body's abilities others help us reach
outside our comfort zones we have left
an indelible mark on the planet and now
the time has come to use our skills to
make a better world two three lower like
inventing a new way to
fly
electrically or a device that can smell
I get very excited when technology Works
to save food from going to waste food
waste is enormous Global problem
creating a
machine to heal coral reefs
how do we fix the environment that's
sort of dying in front of
us or even combining a traditional work
of art we see this amazing opportunity
to use pottery with modern chemistry
Could you actually make something like
that do you have something similar to
provide clean drinking water I made a
shape similar to that building stuff
change it right now on Nova
[Music]
as an american-based supplier to the
construction industry carile is
committed to developing a diverse
workplace that supports our employees
advancement into the next generation of
leaders from the manufacturing floor to
the front office learn more at carle.com
[Music]
human beings have been changing our
surroundings for thousands of
years the signs are written on the land
itself we're Builders and makers and the
evidence is plain to see our whole lives
are constructed we live in the modern
world in a very altered environment and
all of that alteration starts and
finishes with engineering engineering
can transform a community by bringing
power bringing water growing
food taking sewage away the power grid
telecommunications these are all
Engineering Systems that are not about
making any one of us smarter or stronger
or faster but making us collectively
have more agency and more capacity but
building the modern world has come with
steep costs and changes to more than
just the land like altering the chemical
composition of our
atmosphere but now there's a new
generation that wants to engineer a
cleaner Planet so as an engineer when
you see the world as it is you begin to
think how could we make it better so
that's our job to take the world as it
is and make it better everyone's
engineering background it comes from
that purpose of saying I want to solve a
problem that just changes the
[Music]
world one daunting challenge we face
today is to reduce the carbon emissions
caused by burning fossil fuels
electrifying Transportation offers some
Hope on the ground cars buses trucks and
trains are gradually making the switch
but what about in the air is there a way
to go green in
flight at Joby aviation in Marina
California Engineers think
so they're testing a new kind of
aircraft so today uh joby's flight test
team is putting the aircraft through its
Paces flying range and endurance
missions the aircraft is a hybrid like a
helicopter able to take off vertically
but also like an airplane able to fly
horizontally at high speeds and it's
completely electric the challenge is you
know how do we make a personal
helicopter how do we make them
sustainable right we don't want to bring
more jet fuel into the world it is
routine for us to fly three times a day
cruising around at about 100
knots jy's ultimate dream is to deploy
the aircraft in cities around the world
as flying taxis reducing congestion on
the ground today they're in the final
testing stages of their latest prototype
but despite promising results they're
not Taking Chances with humans on this
round there's actually nobody on board
the aircraft while it's in Flight pilot
is simply sat on the ground in the
ground control station flying the
aircraft
remotely technically it's known as an
evor
electric vertical takeoff and Landing
but it's also capable of level forward
flight as we're going through our air
speed expansion we are testing at a
certain air speed performing a bunch of
tests to make sure our aircraft is
stable and then expanding into different
air speeed regimes all the way to fully
wingborne flights this day's testing is
winding down a sudden tilt on touchdown
is quickly corrected by the remote pilot
something to tweak for future flights
our analysts look at the data after the
flight to make sure that the aircraft is
performing exactly as we expect it to as
Joby Engineers work to realize their
dream significant engineering challenges
remain before regular passenger flights
become a reality as you're trying to
develop Transportation devices you
really need to understand the
environment in which this systems need
to operate and iterate the engineering
design the components the test ing
specifically to those needs today it's
not uncommon to see helicopters in City
Skies but they have drawbacks they're
noisy the learning curve to fly them is
steep they have limited forward speed
and they burn fossil
fuels joby's design is an attempt to
address all of those
problems you have identified a problem
can you make an airplane that uses prop
propers like a helicopter but doesn't
have that noise well you've dreed it up
the question is how do you actually
bring it into
existence all right one 2 3
lower one of the biggest challenges has
been to invent a new propulsion system
the idea was to design a vehicle for
four passengers and a pilot that can
rise straight off the ground and then
somehow transition to fly like an
airplane Joby solution six electric
motors that can individually pivot
propelling the vehicle up to 200 mph
eliminating fossil fuels and reducing
noise a critical Improvement if they
have any hope of widespread
adoption that's what gives the aircraft
its unusual profile six smaller
propellers that are quiet than a single
helicopter blade but because they're
small everything depended on finding the
right propeller shape a surprisingly
complicated problem part art and part
science with much of the knowhow handed
down since the early pioneers of powered
flight these propellers may seem wholly
modern but if we Trace their evolution
we can see clear connections to the Past
Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks contain
one of the most famous early
conceptualizations of a device
resembling the modern propeller Da Vinci
in turn may have been inspired by the
Greek philosopher Archimedes and his
screw shaped water pump or even by
Nature certain plants and seeds like the
Maple and Sycamore have evolved similar
shapes when they fall from trees they
look and work remarkably like helicopter
blades at Joby the design team is
looking for the best shape to Balance
power and
Noise We went through a lot of
experimentation with actual propeller uh
prototypes we needed to put real work in
in terms of experiments to really
understand this
phenomenon to reduce noise it helps to
understand what causes
it as each propeller blade slices
through the air it creates pressure
vibration
the strength of those vibrations depends
in turn on a propeller's shape how fast
it spins and the number of
blades so we iterated with the number of
designs we've took blades with a lot of
Blade area and then much thinner blades
and uh trying to see how that results in
acoustic generation these propellers are
turning much slower than traditional
helicopter blades we varied the shape a
lot through
experimentation I think this trial and
error system is something that allows us
to ever more refine design produce and
uh test which in multiple iterations
allows us to arrive to uh to Optimal
Solutions the company has tested several
blade shapes hoping to find the best
combination of efficiency lightness and
durability to test each new propeller
design the company has built a large
circular track in an old quarry near
Santa Cruz in Quarry we have what we
call the worly bird uh which is a track
kind of like a roller coaster track that
goes around in circles and we have to
test this propeller not only in Hover
conditions but through all the
conditions that it experience through
transition as well as forward flight on
the track they test each iteration of
the propeller for durability and blade
design as well as for noise
and then we adjust the angle of the
propeller the speed of the propeller the
variable pitch on it to see how it
operates in different regime of flight
that the real airplane would experience
and we can do this for hours on end days
on end uh to see how the system
performs the design of a propeller is a
very theoretically heavy lift however at
the end of the day experimental results
Rule and their ability to build that
huge test ring to really you know
compare their experimental results with
the the theoretical predictions are
really what allowed them to advance and
push their entire plane forward
ultimately they discovered that their
original design which was wider actually
performed better than subsequent Slimmer
designs the greater surface area allowed
them to slow down the propeller's
rotation speed reducing noise while
meeting power requirements wa when you
do the experiments you realize you're
going down the wrong path and you start
to go back and see like well why is the
thing that I try to do that makes things
better actually worse so you challenge
your own
assumptions challenging assumption is
something that is an essential component
in engineering being able to harvest the
advances of Divergent thinking and
creative thinking is something that in
the end promotes Innovation and allows
us to advance technology much faster a
change to the shape of the propeller
helps with the nature of turbulence
generated by the blade exactly how they
did it a Joby representative said is a
trade
secret but the result is a vehicle that
the company says produces a 100 times
less acoustic power than a
helicopter eventually they're hoping to
expand their test program to include
passengers and move move toward full
certification from the Federal Aviation
Administration safety is
non-negotiable look I'm going to put my
kids on these airplanes and so this is
this is close to me just as it is close
to everybody
else now being able to travel routinely
with an aircraft like this and be able
to do it relatively low cost and super
available to the masses is so exciting
today air travel accounts for an
estimated 10% of the carbon produced by
all
Transportation it's this kind of
experimentation that could lead to
bigger changes in air
travel electrifying Aviation is one of
the hardest engineering challenges we
face but not every problem requires such
a difficult solution when it comes to
finding ways to reduce carbon emissions
there is some lower hanging
fruit over thousands of years we've
gotten more and more efficient at
growing food for an Ever growing
population but the road from Farm to
Table can be long and
wasteful globally a third of all crops
go bad before they reach the table and
with food production accounting for
about 30% of global greenhouse gas
emissions reducing food waste could be
one solution to our climate problem
at least that's the idea behind a
Norwegian rot sniffing
robot the BMA Food Warehouse in Oslo
Norway an person is the director of
quality
assurance we get about 2,000 pallets in
here every night the produce comes in
from 80 countries they're being scanned
here and then they go straight to the
quality control tower
this is the first control that is being
done when it comes to
Norway inspectors screen the produce for
spoilage as best they can before sending
it to the
supermarket the problem is we don't have
very much time to inspect the pallets
it's maximum 60
seconds and also due to the setup of the
quality stations we only able to control
the two upper layers
maximum that means even with a
experience visual inspection only goes
so far inevitably some spoiled produce
goes undetected and gets shipped along
with the rest of the produce all over
Norway to local
supermarkets so our question was how can
we check the whole pallet so that's when
we started to look after new
technology the goal is increased
freshness and reduced food waste if we
can detect spoilage earlier in the value
chain we are also able to do more with
the products that we might reject we can
sort them we can give them to food
banks Bama connected with tunable a
small tech company in Oslo inventors of
an artificial nose or machine allf
faction device that is already in use
monitoring the amount of greenhouse
gases emitted by
containerships tyu maduma is tuna's
business development manager
Bama came to us they explained that they
had this problem of determining the
quality of the fruits and vegetables
being able to do it at a large scale and
being accurate there's a long history of
inventions that allow us to extend our
senses so we've done that for Sight
we've done that for hearing so we have
microscopes we have hearing aid but
smell is still a sense that we haven't
digitalized
and that's what we're doing Christian
hovit is tuna's CEO when you take a
breath you're doing a multi-gas analyzes
you're pulling in molecules and those
molecules are detected by your nose and
then it's detected by your brain to tell
you what you're smelling the challenge
for tunable was to take their existing
analyzer for emission analysis and
increase its sensitivity without making
the device too big and cumbersome to be
useful on a warehouse Flor
so why use
smell our noses are sensitive detectors
able to identify a wide variety of
chemicals in the air even at low
concentrations Airborne molecules can
also potentially reveal what's hidden in
the
pallets these molecules tell a chemical
story of fruits and vegetables as they
rot but the device would have to be far
more sensitive than a human nose and
able to detect spoilage more reliably
than a human
eye produce like all living things
decays after death as microbes consume
dead cells releasing volatile organic
compounds in theory the team should be
able to tune their machine to recognize
those
molecules we knew that we could look at
complex
gases we redesigned emission Andy
and then we started
testing Ivan YULA rer is the lead
engineer on the tunable Enos project so
now I'm going to measure fresh grapes
and then some spoiled grapes to see if
our Enos can spell the difference I'll
start with collecting a sample from the
ambient air as a baseline for the
measurement and the noise you can hear
now is actually the compressor pump
pulling air uh into the analyzer
so now I'm going to take a sample from
the fresh grapes to see if there is
anything present there the probe pulls
in air and then compresses it by a
factor of five which increases the
density of the sample and makes
molecules easier to
detect next infrared light shines
through the sample the light then passes
through a chip that sorts different
types of molecules based on the specific
wavelengths of light they absorb which
ultimately allows the analyzer and
accompanying software to reliably detect
the presence and concentration of
molecules that signal spoilage with
extreme
sensitivity the reading I got now
doesn't really show any molecules
present at all compared to amute air
which is more or less what I would
expect from fresh
fruit so now I'm going to take a sample
for the spoil grapes we see a clear
difference we see up to 12% absor abon
at the ethanol wavelength which is a
good indication that we actually smell
the rotten grapes so this looks really
promising the fumes we were able to
collect we were able to see the the kind
of the signatures the engineers then
tested different kinds of fruits and
vegetables as they decayed building up a
database of chemical
profiles we saw a tomato was different
somewhat from a
banana Gra were different from avocado
for
example and we thought well this must be
[Laughter]
interesting T bah is the founder and
chief technology officer of tunable he's
been working with microelectr mechanical
systems for over 30 years tunable is uh
component uh inside our analyzers that's
the tunable filter it's used to change
the Wailing photo light so we can scan
SC away length and do
spectroscopy spectroscopy it's very much
like tuning a radio to find a particular
station the gases are separated in the
infrared Spectrum just like radio
stations and then you can basically
detect each one of them so that's where
the word tunable comes
from after extensive fine tuning in the
lab it's time for the very first field
test in the warehouse sometimes you
can't learn about all of the variables
that will be involved in an engineered
system sitting on a desk with a pen and
paper or at a computer screen you need
to go out into the field you need to put
it in the actual environment see how it
interacts learn from that make changes
and move forward now I'm capturing ad
there and then ready to do the
measurement on the
grapes ivend watches the screen waiting
to see The Telltale grape wave form
but the pump just wors away and
eventually he gives
up uh I don't really know what happened
here
uh for some reason um the results wasn't
as expected the first time definitely
wasn't the charm Murphy's Law
yeah we know that it works in a
laboratory environment so the big thing
now is showing that actually
works in real life and as you seen
there's been some
challenges we tend to think of failure
is a bad thing right that's something
that is not supposed to happen happens
but if you're doing anything new failure
is an integral part of the process and
the reason for that is because we can't
perfectly predict or understand how
things are going to work in the real
world until we try
them turns out the warehouse temperature
a chilly 41° f affected the test
result the cold part we did know that it
was cold in that area but did we take
into on account enough no we didn't we
should of course have think thought
about that but uh but that's kind of the
learning that's the
process back in the lab the tunable team
recalibrated their chip to account for
the balma warehouse
temperature they also adjusted the
design to include the pumps that
compress the sample increasing the
density of the gas to compensate for the
lower metabolic rate of the food in the
refrigerated
environment it will be really
interesting to see if the alterations we
have made will actually do the
difference in the
field Ivan is back with the latest
iteration of the Enos further testing in
the lab showed that even with the
changes the machine needs time to adjust
to the conditions in the
warehouse now I'll let the instrument
stay here for the night to reach a
steady temperature and then we'll do
measurements
[Music]
tomorrow now after a long cold night the
system should be ready to go
[Music]
now we see absorption of light at more
or less 9.5 10 microns which um indicate
ethanol being present this really shows
that our new chip is working in this
Real
Environment Ivan uses the Enos to sample
the air from various locations on the
entire pallet stack actually we see a
spike at ethanol absorption wavelength
so that might be something they've taken
an important step a successful realworld
test of the newest version of the
tunable
Enos I'm not the most excited guy but
um this is uh this is
exciting I expected it although you
never know that's a big
win I get very excited when technology
Works still there is work ahead to make
the technology viable and most
importantly scalable we hope that we can
make them more efficient food waste has
enormous Global problem 8% of all
greenhouse gases comes from food waste
so if we can be a part of the solution
it's
huge reducing food waste is one of many
ways Engineers are trying to slow
climate change
[Music]
but the negative changes we've made to
our climate are already damaging some
environments like coral reefs coral
reefs are in Decline so one of the
things that I really think about is how
do we fix the environment that's sort of
dying in front of
us healthy coral reefs can be stunningly
beautiful and play a critical role in
coastal
ecosystems they Harbor a tremendous
diversity of marine life and contribute
to the overall health of the world
world's oceans and their
coastlines a quarter of all marine
species depend on them for
survival they're also important to
humans often located in shallow water
they can protect Coastal communities
from damaging Storm
surges and the reefs host a primary
sustainable food source for hundreds of
millions of people around the
world but as the oceans warm corals are
struggling to survive
excessive heat drives away the
microscopic algae the coral dependon
that leads to a dramatic loss of color
known as Coral bleaching a powerful
visual indicator of an unhealthy Reef
but bleaching isn't the only indicator
of a reef in Peril not only it looks
Brown and it's lacking these beautiful
vibrant colors but it just sounds
dead that's where sensory biologist
Aaron money comes in
my background is in hearing and
bioacoustics and I study how animals
perceive the world around
them cor reefs are kind of rainforest of
the sea and just like a really rich
Forest might have a lot of birds calling
and you might hear the monkeys calling
in the background coral reefs are really
the same so basically a healthy coral
reef has a really healthy Rich
soundscape snapping shrimp Lobster and
fish create a symphony indicative of a
biodiverse
community and a degraded cor reef is
just impoverished soundscape it sounds
quiet kind of
desolate so by listening to the
soundscape we can kind of track that
biodiversity and understand when that
change is
happening off the coast of St John in
the Caribbean a team from the Woods Hole
oceanographic institution in
Massachusetts conducts bleaching surveys
finding evidence of degraded reefs
to your right there's some bleach
Coral you knew there was going to be
bleaching here right but then it's
freaking everywhere right I've been
coming here 5 six years now this was the
first time I've seen such bleaching Yogi
gerar is a roboticist and computer
scientist at Woods Hole I'm working on
robots and Ai and machine learning based
techniques to understand uh complex
ecosystems in the ocean such as coral
reefs a question they pose is it
possible to build a robot that can seek
out and find healthy Reefs on its
own if they succeed the robot could
provide an efficient and coste effective
way to find healthy coral reefs map them
and monitor their
health the soundscapes recorded by the
robot could be a vital tool in
diagnosing Reef health and tracking
decline or
Improvement good job
team the team has been collecting data
on reefs for over a decade so you're
going through this yeah might be able to
thread it through here they have
mountains of information including audio
and
video they've even created 3 models of
the reefs for further study helping them
gather this data is this third
generation
robot we call it cury c e uh which
stands for Curious underwater robot for
ecosystem exploration it's equipped with
sensors microphones and cameras and is
still very much under development the
design of a robot is always evolving our
robot is never finished it's an
engineering challenge with a lot of
moving parts so they've broken it down
into many small
steps there are many many problems that
you can solve with an engineering
solution but I think you have to really
understand what the problem is and sort
of pick the two or three that really you
want to address otherwise you kind of
fall into this trap of trying to solve
all the problems all at once and you run
out of
resources this morning the team is
prepping for its latest test right off
the dock all right Dr gerar
ready
always I'll manage the
tether to start they'll place a speaker
on the ocean floor playing a recording
of a healthy coral reef a sound file
they captured from a previous trip
should be on all right
it they're hoping the robot will
recognize the sound through the water
and be able to record
it in this outing the robot is not
moving
autonomously researcher Seth mccamon is
operating the robot remotely to steer
and position it for the
test I'm getting it in line with the
thing so I can start to look at the data
mhm if it robot doesn't work with this
sound is probably not going to work on
the real cor Reef so it's a good good
test
experimenting with sound underwater is
not a new
idea in the 1800s a Swiss physicist and
a French mathematician armed with a bell
and stopwatch measured the speed at
which sound traveled underwater on one
side of Lake Geneva Charles Francois
Stern rang a submerged Bell while Jean
Daniel kadon used a long tube to listen
underwater across the lake pressing his
stopwatch to keep track of how long it
took the sound to travel across
surprisingly they found that water is a
better conduit for sound than air sound
travels through water roughly five times
faster today the Woods Hole team will be
using the speed of sound underwater as
part of their
calculations the robot is equipped with
four microphones designed for underwater
use called
hydrophones as the sound from from the
speaker speeds through the water in all
directions it reaches the hydrophones at
slightly different times just
milliseconds
apart the researchers look at a computer
display that shows the signals recorded
on each
hydrophone and so it'll hit one
hydrophone before the others and by
looking at the relative time of arrival
at those different hydrophones we can
figure out which direction it came from
first and then steer the robot in that
direction
the robot correctly identifies the
direction of the sound an important
first step toward autonomous
navigation a small but important
Victory it's like you're building out of
Legos and you're building up a house
Brick by Brick by Brick and it only
works when the house is fully done but
you need to know that each single brick
in that works on its own in isolation
before you're willing to add it to the
larger picture and so you have this
massive goal that you're trying to
achieve but there needs to be attainable
goals along the way because ultimately
you're dealing with a system of
components a system of elements that
need to work together in order for this
to be successful curri is ready to step
up to a bigger challenge locating an
actual healthy Reef by sound something
less predictable than what the speaker
provided one of the healthier reefs in
St John is in nearby Joel's sh I propos
that we drop the robot like 20 M we're
like 10 m off the re here they'll Place
cury approximately 20 M from The Reef to
succeed it just needs to orient itself
toward the
sound Rob going
in all right Cast
Away so the test today is mostly just
trying to figure out if the robot can
accurately determine which direction The
Reef sound is in it's a more complex
test this time cury is untethered and
the boat is drifting with the ocean
current if they lose contact they could
easily lose the robot entirely and all
of the engineering that went into
it when they began to design this
autonomous robot that would go
underwater there is a need to make sure
that this thing is able to behave in an
environment where if it doesn't we can
retrieve
it curri locates the direction of the
healthy Reef which is
encouraging it's another successful
test the next big hurdle can curri not
only locate but then move toward a
healthy Reef
autonomously this will be a crucial
milestone in the mission which is to
ultimately build a fleet of robots to
map monitor and and record the health of
corals around the
globe while reefs are under serious
threat all over there are some signs of
Hope and some surprising ideas for ways
to protect them including one that came
from this team's
research in their work they discovered
that the sound of a healthy Reef might
actually have an indirect healing effect
on a stressed Reef it has to do with the
coral animals life cycle newly born baby
corals tiny larv drift in the ocean
searching for somewhere to settle it
turns out the sound of a thriving coral
reef signals them to settle into place
once they find a spot they can be very
resilient and grow for centuries so the
more larv a reef can attract the
healthier it will be and that gave the
team an idea we know these reefs are
degraded and we want to rebuild them by
attracting the larvey the Baby Coral
in a past experiment the team found that
larv could be drawn to recordings of
healthy
reefs so by placing speakers in
strategic locations they could give a
boost where it's needed most and that
system actually leverages the healthy
soundscape and plays it back into the
environment and the idea is that it
induces Coral ly to kind choose that
environment and
settle the result up to seven times more
larvey settlement compared to a degraded
Reef with without the audio boost a very
encouraging
sign but back to St John and curri the
team is ready for the final test of the
day the robot's going to use the
direction that it's finding from its
Hyder phones and then drive itself to
whatever the nearest acoustic source is
which we're hoping is going to be Jo sh
Reef this time since curri will pilot
itself it's tethered for safety they put
curri in the water and give it the green
light are we expecting it to be moving
or not we are it looks at first as
though it's orienting toward the sound
of the reef it thinks it's moving but
after a few minutes it's clear that
curri isn't making much Headway it's
just dumb stuff in the way that I wrote
it seems there's an issue with the
software all right bring it
back it's coming up back can now see it
they're starting to lose the light
dark term they weren't able to check off
everything on the day's to-do list yet
they remain
upbeat we're all happy right now cuz uh
we ended the day with this Many Robots
as we started the day with it's
frustrating in the moment but they're
making
progress the creative act of
engineering has got
disappointment has got
failure and that's how we learn so it is
a big ball of of um two steps forward
and one step back when you have a a very
massive why and a very massive purpose
for what you're trying to do such as
save the core re it allows you to
experience the disappointment but not be
defeated by it and continue to try the
process of moving it
forward if you're not failing you're not
trying hard enough yeah it's very
frustrating but when it works it's very
satisfying engineering solutions to The
Climate crisis will require creativity
Innovation and a global commitment to
making smart
choices but we Face many other
challenges as well like restoring
balance to the land after Decades of
industrial
pollution on Navajo land in Arizona an
indigenous artist and Engineers are
collaborating on a unique local approach
to purifying contaminated drinking
water this pristine seeming landscape
conceals a serious
problem 30% of the population in the
Navajo Nation lacks access to clean
drinking water Decades of uranium mining
has polluted the land the United States
government used the heavy metal to
develop the atomic bomb and power its
nuclear weapons program after World War
II when we think of engineering people
are suspicious of it because for a good
part of the 20th
century one of the stories of
engineering was Engineers making
decisions about systems that affected a
lot of other people and often those
effects were not positive byproducts of
uranium mining such as strontium can
mimic calcium in the body causing it to
be absorbed by bones the EPA has awarded
$3.8 million to support three drinking
water projects to benefit the Navajo
Nation some are proposing other more
Homegrown Solutions as
well di so is a third generation Navajo
artist who works in clay people always
ask me when don't you learn how to do
Pottery I always say I was born making
it both my parents parents my mother and
my father both did Navajo
py she's been collaborating with
Scientists naid Sal and STS en
rolls good morning on a project meant to
address the water contamination problem
on a very human
scale I believe that engineering without
people is destined to fail good good
long drive there is this experiential
knowledge knowledge that is housed
within people's lives yet to be unlocked
not all people here use or have access
to Municipal Water so the goal is to
call upon local knowledge to find a
sustainable way to purify water closer
to the home we often think of
engineering as only being the latest and
greatest technology but people have
practices that are very effective now
and and have been for you know decades
centuries longer um and so what can we
learn from those uh existing approaches
that are already effective so Diana um
this was something that we were on this
trip the scientists want to build a new
prototype clay filter for use in
household water
containers the hope is to integrate
locally sourced minerals so that the
finished filter will remove uranium
byproducts like strontium from the
water could you actually make something
like that do you have something similar
I have a one that I made with cone shap
Navajo Potters like Deana use a local
tree sap as a glaze Navid and his team
wondered if the sap could be used as
part of a decontamination filter what we
found was how much knowledge the navajos
already had about the sap they already
knew it has health benefits so this is a
na and his team recently cond conducted
tests that translated indigenous
knowledge into the language of
biochemistry quantifying the extent of
the Sap's antimicrobial properties now
they hope to expand the filter's
capabilities to Radioactive
contaminants they work together
collaboratively to make something new
and better that serves her community in
a really um powerful and very
collaborative way we can engineer a
shape or a design that's going to work
well not only to filter water but people
will want to use we see this amazing
opportunity to be able to use Pottery or
Ceramics as filters because it's so a
part of people's everyday life
particularly in places like the Navajo
Nation where traditional practices are
so
important okay which
way Navid and Stetson want to learn the
process of making Pottery the way
Deanna's mother taught her because
collaboration is strongest when it is
truly interdisciplinary yes you see that
gray spot Deanna starts from scratch
harvesting clay from a rocky outcropping
on Navajo land okay so this portion is
what uh that portion is Clay okay we
often as scientists believe that we know
a lot but we forget science as a
discipline has only been around for 500
years there are many ways of generating
knowledge besides the modern scientific
process these are all different ways in
which we interact with the physical
world that diversity gives you new ideas
and thinking about how to put together
old Technologies and new technologies
might lead to entirely New Paths it
creates a semiotic effect because the
more people feel included in what is
being produced by something the more
people see themselves being a part of
the producing of that thing next they
Source sap from pinion trees there's one
right here let's check this one
woo you hit the jackpot with this tree
we're blessed for the
day come on
in I usually just take this much out
Deana demonstrates how to grind minerals
into the fine grains that make up her
clay one of you want to go ahead and
give it a
try I think there's a lot of engineering
that goes into creating Pottery the
freedom that it allows to make any
shape the fusion of Art and Engineering
or maybe even the boundaries between art
and
Engineering perhaps they don't exist
perhaps they're really the same thing
painted with a different
pallet Stetson and Navid are working
with Deana to prototype a shape for the
clay filter I don't know if you know di
but I've been making some pottery since
high school and I made this shap
if exp shapes I made a
shape similar to
that and it looks like this and we do
make these traditional Nao pipes do you
think you can make some grooves similar
to something like this kind of like an
accordion basically so it has the same
surface area but in a smaller
size adding grooves increases the total
surface area of the the
shape more surface area will mean more
contact with the water
inside I'm going to show you an option
we have that we can try coil yeah making
a coil making a
coil yes next the new prototypes need to
be
fired we have been working with Diana
for almost 9 years now make sure we have
it covered nice and good where working
with her side by side as an equal
partner intellectually only opens
opportunities that are more
meaningful than we scientists would ever
find sitting in our
desks the last step heat and strain the
pinion
sap creating the microb resistant resin
which acts as a glaze to coat the
pottery and now a new addition to the
filter can me grab the zeolite the
scientists are using powdered Cavite a
type of naturally occurring zeolite
found abundantly on Navajo
land kazite is a porous Crystal made of
sodium calcium and aluminum silicates
that has the ability to trap and absorb
contaminants finally Deanna applies the
resin the pottery itself has to be hot
that's that has to be hot the team hopes
the chabazite will add function to the
resin removing uranium byproducts like
strontium from any water that comes into
contact with it wow the colors are
beautiful back at the University of
Texas at Austin it's time to test their
water filter prototypes in the lab out
some of the clay using the materials
they sourced with Deanna the scientists
create small clay discs try and just
punch out a little disc like that and
coat them with the same chabazite
enriched resin these are tiny lab
versions of Dianna's
Pottery to test the discs the
researchers Expos them to strontium
contaminated water to see if the resin
will successfully absorb the uranium
byproduct if the filter works as
expected the csite will capture
strontium from the water through ionic
exchange as the water passes
through hey Andre here's the sample yeah
thank you senior research scientist
Andre dolocan loads a sample into an ion
Mass spectrometer it scans the sample on
the molecular level layer by layer over
several
hours when it's done the result is a map
of the elements within the scanned
sample surface when the clay disc is
completely scanned it's time to check
the results this is the strontium signal
right the data show that the strontium
is found in the same places as kabite in
the resin we have the zeolite really
obvious sodium aluminum
silicon okay and now theum is increasing
exactly like it's an encouraging sign
that the cite is working as expected
when used with deana's Pottery
technique so I guess it was a really
successful run Andre we can see
Association of strum with the Zite I
agree this is a good start one thing
that I've learned from the research and
design process is that kind of doing
co-creation activities with the end User
it's really a way to kind of bridge and
create new Innovative process because
you're bringing the people who are using
the technology throughout the whole
journey so this is the one that de made
that now a few steps closer to their
goal the researchers will work to
incorporate Deanna's spiral and the
cites filtering power into their final
design so moving forward I think the
most difficult engineering challenge is
Yet to Come and I think it's going to be
translating our results from you know a
lab scale experiment to something that's
going to be usable in households
throughout the Navajo
Nation at the end of the day we want to
unlock human potential and in order to
unlock human potential we are not doing
ourselves a Justice if we continue to
only demand certain solutions from a
subset of our populations the more we
can get more people included the more we
can unlock not just solutions to
problems that we now see but things that
are yet to
come as we change our world through
engineering it's up to us to make
changes for all of us by all of
us I think we're all Engineers we all
build things um we all design design
things uh we all break things and then
have to fix them and put them back
together and we get to decide what comes
next what if we designed this what if
the world was to look like this in 50
100 years what could that look
like the engineer work has never done if
you're not failing you're not trying
hard enough you can always create
something
new building stuff to change the world
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