The oil leak is leaking anywhere from 10,000 to 90,000 barrels of oil a day. So if you spilt the difference you get 50,000 barrels of oil. Now BP said that cutting into the pipe will "temporarily increase flow up to 20%...so that's another 10,000 barrels of oil. So they cut the pipe and fit the cap. Success, kinda. The "cut" was not perfect and thus a seal could not be created, and not all the oil was being collected. BP then said it collected about 6,000 barrels of oil the first day of the cap. Now I am no mathematician but I believe that if the leak was increased to 60,000 barrels a day and you are only collecting 6,000 barrels; you actually increased the leak by 4,000 barrels a day. Does anybody else's brain hurt? Well again, this is probably exaggerated and taken out of context but it is interesting and frustrating trying to figure out the actually strategy to fix it (and BP just recently stated on their website that they are obtaining about 25,000 barrels a day).
Now after all my rambling, I do have a solution. The best way to solve problems, especially one's where there could be multiple answers and need to involve many different aspects, is to give it to students. Tell all the engineering students at the top engineering schools that they must "solve" this crisis as their engineering final to graduate. That motivation is so great, and the ideas are so raw that it would more than certainly work. The students would work in teams pulling an "All-weeker" (that's the week form of an all-nighter) and hand in a spotless proposal Monday morning after drinking enough coffee to kill a small elephant and eating enough cold pizza to freak out your mom, and still finding time to play a few rounds of beer pong Saturday night while their computers were recharging. My assumption is that the people currently working on this project have tunnel vision and have no capacity to see problems before they happen (like a machine freezing up in water that is essentially below freezing! DUH! - and I can explain that in another post if anybody wants me too). College seniors that have worked on unsolvable problems for four years would gladly take the opportunity to show up the big time companies and fix the problems. I even believe that Purdue's own Rube Goldberg Team (pictured below) could solve this problem in fewer attempts!
In all seriousness, it is a terrible catastrophe and we must all do our part to help fix this and prevent future disasters. Let's just hope that BP comes to it's senses and asks for help from someone!
Now after all my rambling, I do have a solution. The best way to solve problems, especially one's where there could be multiple answers and need to involve many different aspects, is to give it to students. Tell all the engineering students at the top engineering schools that they must "solve" this crisis as their engineering final to graduate. That motivation is so great, and the ideas are so raw that it would more than certainly work. The students would work in teams pulling an "All-weeker" (that's the week form of an all-nighter) and hand in a spotless proposal Monday morning after drinking enough coffee to kill a small elephant and eating enough cold pizza to freak out your mom, and still finding time to play a few rounds of beer pong Saturday night while their computers were recharging. My assumption is that the people currently working on this project have tunnel vision and have no capacity to see problems before they happen (like a machine freezing up in water that is essentially below freezing! DUH! - and I can explain that in another post if anybody wants me too). College seniors that have worked on unsolvable problems for four years would gladly take the opportunity to show up the big time companies and fix the problems. I even believe that Purdue's own Rube Goldberg Team (pictured below) could solve this problem in fewer attempts!
In all seriousness, it is a terrible catastrophe and we must all do our part to help fix this and prevent future disasters. Let's just hope that BP comes to it's senses and asks for help from someone!
