75 Replies to “Y2Kyoto: The Answer To Our Energy Needs”

  1. Water is 10lbs per Can. gal. (US gal is a bit smaller though)
    Add wet clothes and heh, you’ll need three men and a small boy just to do one load, now the rinse, then the spin, next three days bedding and towels, smile everyone, we’ve done you a favor!
    Seriously, better these MIT social elites be there than dealing with real technical stuff in the adult world.

  2. My mother in law came from China 55 years ago. She worked full time and raised three kids and still does all the laundry by hand.
    “Machine no good,… wreck the clothes”
    She actually has a perfectly functioning new machine in the basement and a dryer.
    One of her first jobs here was doing other peoples laundry in the traditional Chinese laundry (ancient Chinese secret, eh Mr Chan)) her uncle set up when he immigrated.
    I would be amazed if she could ride that bike/washing machine for 30 seconds.
    Where are all the women that actually, you know, do, the laundry at that orphanage?
    Laughing their asses off, just like us, I’m sure.

  3. Zog
    Any of those folks in the picture could have come up with that design had necessity or demand required it. IMO it patronizing at best.
    I doubt you’ll find anyone here who is against students designing things that are efficient, cheap and clean, especially if it will help those who are less fortunate, but this washing machine is a joke.
    BTW why aren’t leftards screaming that “ We have no right to expose people in other countries to our lifestyle”. Leftards get pissed when BK feeds a few Tibetan’s a few burgers, or when an actress whips out her tit to feed a hungry baby. Clearly this washing machine is an insult to South American culture.

  4. Zog. Dude. Two words, “agricultural” “museum”.
    Which contain, to my certain knowledge, multiple examples of this very machine in question. Some run by dogs, some by ponies, some by humans. Also all manner of human, animal, wind and water powered hay rakes, binders, threshers, lifting, hauling and moving machines, mills, forges, bellows, and etc. etc. et bloody cetera.
    Then there are the multitude of steam engines, distilate engines, oil pulls, all manner of things that go puff puff and turn a big frickin’ flywheel.
    All of which being already invented, patented, manufactured, sold, re-sold, and finally resting in museums all over the Western world. Available, free to anyone with a measuring tape and even half a frickin’ brain to copy what somebody else already did.
    There are also books.
    I -am- an elitist. I think that is somebody gets in to an engineering school like MIT, they should damn well produce elite work. Which this is most certainly not. What this is, is plagiarism camouflaged in a thick coating of Massachusetts liberal white guilt.

  5. ulianov, speaking of minds working:
    What’s your estimate for how long that kid is going to last pedaling that thing in that position? How’s the ergonomics there? Great, good, or could be better? How does it compare to a scrub board and a tub of hot water for cost and efficiency? Can anybody make one? Without a welder? Is four years a reasonable length of time for the development of a machine like that?
    I await your analysis. No doubt I’ll be awaiting awhile.

  7. The Phantom, s/he’s likely still stunned that water weights that much.
    Might be searching (or editing! lol) wiki to disprove this and to the person stating that “crouching down in freezing water to wash clothes” or something to that effect…well IMHO, only cold ground water is in the more northern and I would assume southern hemispheres.
    The ground water where this happy event is located would not be ‘freezing’ nor very cold at all.
    Best to get those solar bags, to fill with water to heat up in the sun and soak dirty clothes with that water.
    Positioned right one can actually have a hot shower, directly from the bag.
    and Uli-what ever, you take your days clothing, one towel, (assuming you clean daily) you may be of European originas so I’ll eliminate the face cloth for ya, one bed sheet (based on what likely they’d have and a pillow case – get them soaking wet then weight them,
    Get back to us k?
    Don’t forget for that contraption to work the clothes have to flow, add more water please, otherwise it’s be like moving wet cement.

  8. Phantom, ldd – give up. We obviously cannot get the point across to enginering students. To then think that we can teach trolls…

  9. But … but … but…. that kid is producing extra CO2 while pedalling that hard.
    Climate criminal! Off with his CO2 ration!!

  10. 4 years to figure out how to ruin a perfectly function and useful bicycle and make something of questionable functionality and usefulness?
    Would have been better to make something towed behind the bicycle, then have a secondary PTO from the bike to do the laundry near the source of water, the air dry on the ride home. (that only took me about 30 seconds to figure out). I am sure a resourceful third world welder could figures something out that is even more useful.
    NOW do you clepto-commie faux caring individuals understand the disdain?
    PS, and why is not the woman doing the laundry? (don’t hit me please)
    PPS and that bike position will ruin the kids knees in time.

  11. Human Powered wash machines. Google search 272,000 hits. Four years of research. Homeless Dave has #1.

  12. Frankly, that whole photo just says “Eco-paternalism” to me.
    The Gaia worshipping, middle-class suburbanite, university educated fruit loop in green, shows how poor people can not only remain poor, but, work hard at it for her moral delight, on a 3 month vacation organized by some tranzy NGO.
    Does my tirade indicate a puke factor??
    An economical and efficient washing machine from General Electric would have done much more for these people.

  13. Next, MIT eco-students will come up with tread-mills to power electricity generators so they can have green electricity.

  14. After all this thing has very little in the way of technological innovation
    I disagree, Powell Lucas at March 5, 2009 11:14 AM, this isn’t low tech. It demands rotary bearings; steel production; bicycle and drum fabrication and lubrication oil.

  15. My mother used a washboard; she was very happy and relieved when, finally, we could afford a washing machine.

  16. Hi Honey, what did you do today,I suppose you sat around reading novels all day. Smack, thud.
    or Wow Honey that thing is really toning you up, Here I’ll get you some more clothes to wash, fancy a bit of romance later, smack, smack thud.
    mike

  18. As uues pointed out, this person went to MIT and the best they can come up with is something obviously copied from Gilligan’s Island — except The Professor would have made it from “eco-friendly” bamboo and old coconut shells.

  19. hey. 46 years ago today the hulahoop was patented.Maybe this will be patented by MIT?

  20. actually,in central america, if the poor have electricity, it’s delivered by extension cord laying on the ground, so walk carefully when it rains:-))))
    so with NO electric pump at the well, which is centralized, you drag the “washing” machine to the well, problemo is you have to dump the damn thing, and that “clean” washer water will leak back into the well and flavour the drinking water, these MIT’rs didn’t do their home work before their brilliance shone on their own pee brains

  21. I note the trolls have fled for the baseboards.
    See Tenebris? Its not education per se, its more Pavlovian conditioning. Yank out the cluebat and they run.
    Did you catch the video with the MIT girlie pedaling that thing? Not easy!
    And speaking of cluebats and hitting, that chick’s instructors at MIT are here:
    http://d-lab.mit.edu/development
    They need some major cluebat smacking too. Wash the cloths for a whole g.d. orphanage with a bicycle? A bicycle set up that badly? Four years in the making? Major. Smacking.

  22. How about the peddle powered washing machine used on GILLIGANS ISLAND or the peddle powered car and biodegradible to

  23. Agree with previous commentators regarding the absurd length of time it took to create such a mechanically trivial device. Definately not what I’d associate with MIT unless they have different admission standards for students who do “green engineering”.
    The last place that needs a bicycle powered washing machine is the third world where people already exercise considerably more than they do in N. America. Given the increasing weight of many N. American children, what is needed is a bicycle powered generator that could be used to power video games and computers.

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