Hi Marshall, I believe the saying goes like this "If you give a man a fish, he will eat for a day. If you teach a man to fish, he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day."
That being said, you can get silver wire much cheaper than your estimate. The good stuff (12 gauge at .9999) is only 5 bucks a foot. The cheap stuff. (14 gauge at .999) is way cheaper. I've bought several times from the site below with good success. 20 dollar min order and a few bucks for shipping. http://www.ccsilver.com/silver/superfines.html#four Does anyone else have a good recommendation about where they get their metal? pee-s Instead of the drop cloth and a solar panel, you can always use a few pieces of zinc and copper soaking in your own urine as the power source. It might cut the cost. Hope this helps, Andy > > From: Marshall Dudley <[email protected]> > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: CS>Ian's piece on CS > > > They say to give someone food will feed them a day. Teach them how to raise > their own will feed them a lifetime. > > We do not need to supply them with CS. That would be expensive (shipping of > water is expensive) and ineffective. We need to provide them with the means > to make their own. Since many areas do not have electricity, they need to > be > supplied with kits to make CS using solar cells. The source of pure water > is more problematic. But there are methods to do solar distillation that > should work quite well in tropical and subtropical areas. These methods > require only a bucket, a stick, some clear plastic dropcloth, and some > water > soaked fabric. > > I bet such kits could be put together for no more than $20 each, and could > easily save several lives a year. Such a kit would contain: > > 1. silver wire - cost $2 > 2. container - $.50 > 3. resistor - $.10 > 4. LED - $.20 > 5. wire - $.10 > 6. plastic dropcloth - $3 > 7. Solar panel - $10 > > Total: $15.90 > > If anyone could put such a venture together, I would be willing to donate > 50% of the profit from our CS manufacturing to help support it. > > Marshall >
