So every week the Engineering Teaching Office at my university email us all with a newsletter which a few weeks contained, amongst other things, a link to the Electrolux Ideas Lab competition. Intrigued of course I gave it a look, and saw the challenge to be a relatively simple one – how to get more people into sustainable, healthy, home cooking?
I’m a big fan of food, not quite enough of a connoisseur of anything in particular to call myself a ‘foodie’ but I enjoy home cooking, finding new recipes, new kitchen tools and ingredients, and tasting new things (as long as there’s no aniseed in it eeeurgh).
Anyway, the challenge caught my attention and I had been pondering various ideas for a while, it being an interesting topic of conversation to share with others I had also asked my lovely siblings who were slightly more interested in the topic of how to spend any possible prize money than any helpful ideas to get there…
Then this last week my friend Immie came to stay with me – my ever wonderful friend, former flatmate, victim of my many cooking and tasting experiments, occasional cooking partner in crime, and cooking fan herself. We were watching of course the Great British Bake Off when I brought up the subject of the competition challenge and she actually had a brilliant suggestion of an egg beater that could identify the viscosity of egg whites so that it could be preset to beat to ‘stiff peaks’ or other jargon-full options that often deter non-cooking fans from getting stuck in.
As an electrical and mechanical engineer, I started planning rough sensor and control plans in my head and contemplating the implications of placing sensors in a conventional beater or blender. So we questioned the conventional design and started wondering why a whisk looks like it does, what it achieves and how well it actually achieves it?
So rather than repeat myself, I’m just going to show you the video of our competition entry submitted below and encourage you to read through the accompanying description of what we eventually developed:
The competition is assessing the ideas submitted but “The Top 5 videos that receive the most likes/shares on social media will automatically advance to the Top 50 list” so we would very much appreciate it if you supported us by liking and/or sharing the video above to help us!
Watch this space for more updates on the project when they happen!
Blue Pigeons 