UNIT 3 : BRIGHT IDEAS

1. Main idea 1 : Liquid lenses

Many people need eyeglasses but there often aren’t enough eye doctors
Physicist Joshua Silver has a solution : Adjust your own eyeglasses
- Silver invented eyeglasses that have lenses filled with a liquid
- Adjusting the amount of liquid changes the strength of the lenses, making it easier
for people to see better
2. Main idea 2 : Fuel briquettes
Smoke from indoor cooking kills more than 2 million children each year
Amy Smmith discovered a way to make a safe cooking fuel whose material is also free and
plentiful farm waste
There is a low-cost device that compresses farm waste into fuel briquettes
These briquettes produce smoke that is less dangerous than the smoke from other fuel
This innovation has an economic benefit
3. Main idea 3 : Disaster shelters
Over 31 million people worldwide lose their homes every year due to natural disasters
Graphic designer Michael McDaniel invented inexpensive, temporary housing for people in
these situations
The shelters are very portable – you can stack them like paper cups to trainsport them
easily
McDaniel hopes that his invention will provide an affordable solution to help people
rebuild their lives