treadle pump team symposium presentation

Second Annual Undergraduate Symposium on International Humanitarian Engineering

Department of Mechanical Engineering, MSU

the treadle pump design team -- Ann, Filipe, Jon, and Peter – rocked their symposium presentation!  I wish I could post the whole thing here.  although they have a Design Day event still coming up, this was really their academic deliverable and pinnacle of the semester’s activities.   

they started with a video describing the need and the impact of treadle pumps on farmers and their families in rural India.  this showed that a farmer spends four hours a day walking back and forth with water-laden containers to irrigate their crops during the dry season, in temperatures of 100 degrees.  treadle pumps can make the difference between rich farmers and poor farmers, allowing for more varied crops, larger crops, proper nutrition/housing/clothing for the family, money being saved, expanded farming, and more.  the impact is potentially huge, as in India farming is 17% of the GDP (1.2% in the US) and it employs 52.1% of the workforce (less than 5% in the US).

the bulk of the presentation took us through the process they used in investigating and designing their solution, step by step.  it was a very professional and informative presentation.  after describing – and showing in person! – their final design, the team showed a short video of them using the pump and pumping up water from a river on campus to a bridge above it.

the theme of the presentation was “Walking on Water” and the slides took us along a figurative walking trail from one part of their project to the next.  they also supplied a tri-fold brochure containing the problem definition and design specifications, the solution, the approach, and the results and conclusions.  these items have been detailed in prior posts, but the brochure was an excellent and visually appealing summary of the project for the audience, which included a dean/department head, an administrator, and a vice president of the university, at least. 

here you can see their team video of the working pump:

and here is their whole presentation video!