Name : Ms. Sarit Swapan Das
District & State : Nayagarh, Orissa
Category : Engineering
Award : Appreciation
Award Function : 4th National Grassroots Innovation Awards
Award Year : 2007
Innovation Description
Background
Sarit Swapna Das (13) has made a simple weighing device from a waste scooter tyre, which can weigh up to 25 kilograms. This simple device provides ease to weigh things to minor vendors and farmers.She made this device when she was in class fifth and presently, she is studying in eighth standard at her village?s high school. She likes her village very much because of the love, affection and brotherhood among the villagers.Idolizing Swami Vivekanand, she has great respect for our Prime Minister Shri Manmohan Singh. Her inspiration is her father and teacher.
Genesis
Swapna observed the problems faced by farmers who do not own a cheap and reliable system to weigh their produce. They had to go to other people who owned weighing scales and pay money to use their machines. Sometimes at the sales point, they had disputes over the exact weight, as the weighing scales were often rigged. While studying, she noticed an unused scooter tube in her courtyard. It was a rainy day. By chance, she stamped on the scooter tube and observed that a jet of water rushed out from the scooter tube valve. She then connected a drip-tube in the valve and found that the air trapped inside the scooter tube pushed the water in the tube when she stood on it again. She then decided to develop a weighing balance using the scooter tube.
Innovation
The weighing device consist of the inner tube of scooter tyres filled with air, connected through the air-valve to a transparent plastic (saline) tube, filled with red colored water, and a calibrated vertical display. As weights are added on top of the air filled tyre tube, the compression of the tube causes the air from the tube to pass through the air-valve and displace the colored water in the tube, which rises up in the plastic tube and the reading comes up on the vertical scale. The calibration of the system is done with standard weights placed on the tyre tube and marking the equivalent levels of the red colour water point on scale.By this simple device, one farmer can easily weigh his goods/vegetables in market up to 25 kg. Such devices do exist in some other places also, but given her age and enterprise, the effort seemed worth appreciating. Wishing to become a cardiologist, she mentions that through good innovations we can make our country prosperous. She believes that our hard work can make our country surpass America.
http://nif.org.in/innovation/Weighing_-machine_using_scooter_tyres/344