| Students
and staff at Platt Technical High School in Milford, Connecticut
recently had a great opportunity to help people on the other side
of the world. Bill Fusco, a graduate student at Tufts University,
needed to have a non-electric filtering system built to help residents
of Kwabeng, Ghana to detect parasites in their water supply. Fusco
whose father Lou is an instructor in the Culinary Arts program
Fusco at Platt Tech sought
the help of the school's Plumbing and Heating department. Ralph
Salemme, the Plumbing and Heating Department Head, said that they
were very excited about trying to help. "It's half a world
away, and we're helping. It gets the students thinking about other
people", said Salemme.
The device they designed needed a metal plate to hold a filter
and a customized gasket so the Platt Tech Manufacturing Department
was called on to help. The final draft of the product had a filter
with larger holes and a bicycle pump to speed up water flow. The
result is that the residents of Kwabeng, many of them children
who had gotten sick from the parasites, were one step closer to
having a safe water supply.
Bill Fusco showing the filtering device
built
by Platt Tech to the children in Kwabeng
|
