The Rancho's of the Real World

3 Idiots' the toast of Bollywood today and a critique on the rote based learning, focusses on our inability to apply what we have learnt to address the burning issues of our life. In the backdrop of this movie and its main character Ranchchoddas Shyamaldas Chanchad aka Rancho who believes in applying learning for solving problems, I would like to focus upon two Rancho's in real life.

The first Rancho or Ranchos are the folks from Embrace, Stanford d.School grads from the Extreme Affordablity program, engineers and designers by training, innovators and knowledge applicators by profession. The other Rancho even more surprising is Karim Rashid master stylist and enfant terrible of contemporary product design. The first Rancho is driven by social innovation and the other by consumerism.

Embrace, alumni of the Stanford d.school's extreme Affordability program have chucked away their cushy life to be in "the thick of action" to apply what they have learnt in school. Their not for profit initiative seeks to deliver warmth to new borns at just 1% of the cost of a traditional incubator. And how.
We all learnt in our engineering that heat flows from a body at a higher temperature to one at a lower temperature. We also know of latent heat, the energy absorbed during phase change from solid to liquid  and released when the liquid freezes to solid. Embrace's phase change material does just that. It absorbs heat from an electrical base, changes phase from solid to liquid becoming pliable enough to be placed inside a baby's sleeping bag. There it will absorb any surplus heat if the baby gets hot and release it if the baby temperature drops too low performing this activity for a good 4 hours, time enough to take the baby to a hospital.

In Karim Rashid's case, this dezeen article demonstrates the application of what we learnt at school. Mix calcium chloride with water and you get a lot of heat. After that what. Circa 2010 and we get iiamo go is a self-heating feeding bottle that gives parents on the go the ability to serve body temperature milk to their baby anywhere anytime without the use of electricity. And how does he do it:
Pour the mother’s milk, formula or milk powder in the bottle; insert the cartridge in the bottom of the bottle and then just push, wait a few minutes and serve the milk.
The secret lies in the cartridge where :
iiamo warm – the heating cartridge is part of the mystery and secrecy behind the iiamo go success and consist of only salt (CaCl2) and water generating heat by using the re-hydration energy from dehydrated salt.
Whilst Rashid's application may be based on convenience, there are ample situations where hygienic milk can be delivered safely and quickly to babies caught in areas affected by natural disaster.

In 3 Idiot's this point is driven home in the ragging scene where Rancho slips a spoon connected to a live wire where the senior is peeing outside his door and delivering a rather nasty shock to his wouldbe tormentor. Rancho also demonstrates his ability to apply knowledge by building a suction cup used in deliveries using a vacuum cleaner, a lab gauge, some cloth and rubber from a  toilet suction brush.

Looking at these, the key underlying theme is the empathy with the user and application of scientific principles for the betterment of their lives. Is it possible to create more Rancho's if we were to replace rote based learning with case based one which demonstrates the application of scientific principles? Is it possible if these enthusiastic students were placed in the real world before they graduate in the same way as the compulsory rural internship for doctors? How interesting would it be if every college were to have an NGO attached, providing real life  situations for the students to apply their learning?

Would their actions be the same if they were coming from a  rote based system or would they be the Ranchos of tomorrow ? I for one tend to believe in the latter.