Invention in a Bottle

How can an empty plastic drinks bottle make lives better for residents of a shanty town? Here’s a great video that may be of use in covering invention & creative thinking, for which a hat tip is extended across the foyer of the Freman College Business Education Suite to my HoD Luke McIlvenna.

This video shows how one man is using empty drinks bottles filled with water and bleach to create lighting for dark shanty town dwellings in the Phillipines.

Possible classroom activities include:

* Showing the video and pausing at 30 seconds and asking students to solve the problem (if you let in run beyond 30 secs you’ll see a plastic bottle which may give the game away. For the same reason play it in full screen or the video clip title will also spoil the activity!)
* Asking students to think of how many uses they can come up with for a plastic bottle before showing them this as a possible use
* Giving the students the statement ‘plastic bottles filled with spring water and bleach’ and asking if that’s the answer, what’s the question

Enjoy.