Astoundingly simple, totally elegant: Place a clay pot inside a larger clay pot and line the space between with sand. Dampen sand with water, cover with cloth. As water evaporates, the sand is cooled; basic thermodynamics. Result: Eggplants inside now last three weeks rather than three days, and a region that had no refrigeration now does. Inventor Mohammed Bah Abba wins this year’s Rolex Award for his pot-in-pot system (and can now, ironically, afford an electric fridge).
Music: Steve Roach :: Rainfrog Dreaming
I tried reading about it, but yet again designers have conspired to create unreadable text – tiny bold dark brown on slightly lighter brown does not pleasant viewing make!
Oh well…
Homebrewers know this technique, too — we wrap our fermenters in towels and place a corner of the towel in a bucket of water. Evaporative cooling, voila! The hotter and drier it is, the better it works.
Who said solutions have to be high tech?
>Who said solutions ahve to be high tech?
Reminds me of my intro. to environmental science class (way back when…). On an exam one of the final questions was to draw/describe an environmenally friendly clothes drier.
Many students drew elaborate pictures of solar-powered machines, etc. I did, too… until I suddenly realized that not only was this a trick question, but one of common sense — a clothes line.
I don’t know if human beings are naturally drawn to the most elaborate schemes, or if we’ve become so advanced that our hairlessness has socialized us out of simplicity.