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SUSANNA BAIRD
,
AOL
posted: 3 HOURS 48 MINUTES AGO
(JUNE 9) -- Is it a soccer ball? A portable generator? A public health tool conceived by Harvard students who spent time working in developing countries?
Stop! You're all right.
The sOccket looks like a regular soccer ball, but a tiny electric generator hides inside. Children playing soccer for 10 minutes can "earn" three hours of electricity, a boon in Africa, where in most countries 95 percent of the population has no access to electric power.
At roughly 21 oz., the sOccket weighs about a third of a pound more than a regulation ball. The ball performs in a nearly identical fashion, though it is not designed for regulation play.
While players kick the sOccket around the field, an inductive coil mechanism responds to the ball's movement. The tiny machine generates electricity in a similar manner to a shake flashlight and stores it. Users can plug small LED lights or cell phones into a universal DC jack on the ball.
Beyond the electrical application and obvious physical advantages of running around a soccer field, the sOccket provides an additional health benefit. People who don’t have access to electricity often use expensive kerosene. The flames are dangerous, but it's the smoke that presents particular risk; respiratory infections kill more children in developing countries than either AIDS or malaria.
The sOccket looks like a regular soccer ball, but a tiny electric generator hides inside. Children playing soccer for 10 minutes can create three hours of electricity, a boon in Africa, where in most countries 95 percent of the population has no access to electric power.
sOccket.com
Four Harvard students created the sOccket as an engineering class project two years ago. The four bonded over their experiences in developing countries.
Jessica Lin, who graduated with a government degree last year, spent all her college summers working in Africa, including as an intern for the Centers for Disease Control. Recent grad and psychology major Jessica Matthews was born in America to Nigerian parents and serves as marketing and operations manager for a Nigeria-based consulting firm.
Julia Silverman, who graduated this year with a degree in social anthropology, has conducted education research in Tanzania and worked on databases at an AIDS/HIV clinic in South Africa. Hemali Thakkar, who will receive a social anthropology degree next year, was born in India.
The quartet kicked around ideas for mobile health devices and video games before scoring with the sOccket as the clock wound down.
"For us, we had all seen the power of soccer and this universal need for energy, and married the idea together in the last two weeks of class to come up with the sOccket," Linn told AOL News.
That summer, after school let out, Lin traveled to Africa and watched kids from WhizzKids United test their product.
Lin embedded the sOcckets in a pile of regulation soccer balls and let the kids play. They asked kids how the sOcckets performed. Lin recalls one particularly enthusiastic respondent.
"One boy came up to me with a drawing of a sOccket that was bigger and better than ours."
His response, Lin says, underlines an abstract result the team would like to see come from the project. "Hopefully what it does is inspire and encourage children to think about ideas in new, innovative, creative ways, especially children in Africa facing these problems on a day-to-day basis."
Design firm Dot Dot Dot X Y Zed of Cape Town, South Africa, incorporated changes to the sOccket based on the team’s observations of WizzKids and created the current iteration. The Harvard team currently is searching for distribution channels for the ball.
The FIFA World Cup in South Africa, which kicks off Friday, offers the team a perfect opportunity to introduce the sOccket to the soccer universe. To that end, Silverman will attend press conferences and official FIFA events with the hopes that sOccket will emerge a champ.
Silverman will travel with several sOccket prototypes and host focus groups/soccer sessions while in South Africa. Matthews and Thakkar will conduct similar summer research in Nigeria and Liberia.
The group hopes to have the sOccket on shelves by winter. In the meantime, Thakkar returns to her studies, Matthews starts a marketing job in New York, Silverman looks for a job, and Lin moves to South Africa.
They'll all keep their eyes on the ball.
Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
2010 AOL Inc. All Rights Reserved.
2010-06-10 18:00:19
,
AOL
posted: 3 HOURS 48 MINUTES AGO
(JUNE 9) -- Is it a soccer ball? A portable generator? A public health tool conceived by Harvard students who spent time working in developing countries?
Stop! You're all right.
The sOccket looks like a regular soccer ball, but a tiny electric generator hides inside. Children playing soccer for 10 minutes can "earn" three hours of electricity, a boon in Africa, where in most countries 95 percent of the population has no access to electric power.
At roughly 21 oz., the sOccket weighs about a third of a pound more than a regulation ball. The ball performs in a nearly identical fashion, though it is not designed for regulation play.
While players kick the sOccket around the field, an inductive coil mechanism responds to the ball's movement. The tiny machine generates electricity in a similar manner to a shake flashlight and stores it. Users can plug small LED lights or cell phones into a universal DC jack on the ball.
Beyond the electrical application and obvious physical advantages of running around a soccer field, the sOccket provides an additional health benefit. People who don’t have access to electricity often use expensive kerosene. The flames are dangerous, but it's the smoke that presents particular risk; respiratory infections kill more children in developing countries than either AIDS or malaria.
The sOccket looks like a regular soccer ball, but a tiny electric generator hides inside. Children playing soccer for 10 minutes can create three hours of electricity, a boon in Africa, where in most countries 95 percent of the population has no access to electric power.
sOccket.com
Four Harvard students created the sOccket as an engineering class project two years ago. The four bonded over their experiences in developing countries.
Jessica Lin, who graduated with a government degree last year, spent all her college summers working in Africa, including as an intern for the Centers for Disease Control. Recent grad and psychology major Jessica Matthews was born in America to Nigerian parents and serves as marketing and operations manager for a Nigeria-based consulting firm.
Julia Silverman, who graduated this year with a degree in social anthropology, has conducted education research in Tanzania and worked on databases at an AIDS/HIV clinic in South Africa. Hemali Thakkar, who will receive a social anthropology degree next year, was born in India.
The quartet kicked around ideas for mobile health devices and video games before scoring with the sOccket as the clock wound down.
"For us, we had all seen the power of soccer and this universal need for energy, and married the idea together in the last two weeks of class to come up with the sOccket," Linn told AOL News.
That summer, after school let out, Lin traveled to Africa and watched kids from WhizzKids United test their product.
Lin embedded the sOcckets in a pile of regulation soccer balls and let the kids play. They asked kids how the sOcckets performed. Lin recalls one particularly enthusiastic respondent.
"One boy came up to me with a drawing of a sOccket that was bigger and better than ours."
His response, Lin says, underlines an abstract result the team would like to see come from the project. "Hopefully what it does is inspire and encourage children to think about ideas in new, innovative, creative ways, especially children in Africa facing these problems on a day-to-day basis."
Design firm Dot Dot Dot X Y Zed of Cape Town, South Africa, incorporated changes to the sOccket based on the team’s observations of WizzKids and created the current iteration. The Harvard team currently is searching for distribution channels for the ball.
The FIFA World Cup in South Africa, which kicks off Friday, offers the team a perfect opportunity to introduce the sOccket to the soccer universe. To that end, Silverman will attend press conferences and official FIFA events with the hopes that sOccket will emerge a champ.
Silverman will travel with several sOccket prototypes and host focus groups/soccer sessions while in South Africa. Matthews and Thakkar will conduct similar summer research in Nigeria and Liberia.
The group hopes to have the sOccket on shelves by winter. In the meantime, Thakkar returns to her studies, Matthews starts a marketing job in New York, Silverman looks for a job, and Lin moves to South Africa.
They'll all keep their eyes on the ball.
Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
2010 AOL Inc. All Rights Reserved.
2010-06-10 18:00:19
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