Obama attended meet, watch the video here.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: The White House Maker Faire showcased some of the most innovative inventions from across the country when it was held on Wednesday, and one of the most stunning devices at the event belonged to Stanford University Professor Manu Prakash.
Prakash was chosen as one of just 100 individuals invited to the White House this year. These men and women, who hail from 25 different states, were selected because of how they “are using cutting-edge tools such as 3D printers, laser cutters and easy-to-use design software to bring their ideas to life.”
President Barack Obama himself was on-hand during the Maker Faire, cracking jokes with the inventors, testing out some of the inventions, and congratulating these innovative thinkers for leading America forward as a technologically progressive nation. The White House, in a statement, said that the Maker Faire participants help us “celebrate a nation of makers and help empower America’s students and entrepreneurs to invent the future.”
The “$5 Chemistry Set for the 21st Century with a Musical Background” was developed by Prakash (34) over the last couple of years, and was formally announced in April. The set is made from low-cost materials and is designed after an old-fashioned music box, and can be used for a number of different things that Prakash hopes will make it omnipresent in third-world countries around the globe.
Prakash, who is an Assistant Professor of Bioengineering at Stanford, developed the chemistry set alongside graduate student George Korir. The idea is that the user feeds a scroll of paper into the chemistry set, along with any kind of liquid or substance they want to test. Using the hand-crank mechanism, which was inspired by the music box design, a silicon chip inside the set tests the various qualities of the liquid and outputs the results on the paper. After being used the set can be opened up, rinsed out, and re-used for further tests.
The $5 Chemistry Set, Prakash hopes, will be used to test the quality of drinking water in developing nations. If people can be more wary of what they drink, it will lead to fewer diseases and a lower rate of mortality, especially among children.
During the Maker Faire, which was the first-ever of its kind, Obama named June 18 as a National Day of Making, so that in future years, the concept of innovation and technological progress will continue to be celebrated in the US.
A video of Obama speaking at the inaugural Maker Faire, provided by the White House, can be viewed below: