ABSTRACT
You have probably seen water dripping from an air conditioning unit on a hot day or wiped up the water stain left on a table from a cold drink, but you probably never thought how the processes involved in condensation could be used to provide water in areas of the world that are facing drought. Creative thinkers have devised ways of extracting water from the humidity in the air-the process involves cooling the air so that the water can be collected. This is apparently an old idea that is now feasible with modern technology. Several companies are working hard to “make water from air,” a process with immense ramifications-there are billions of people in the world who do not have access to clean drinking water. Like most other examples of creative thinking, it seems like such a simple idea to extrapolate from something we have all seen, but the leap to move beyond the nuisance of a wet glass stain to providing water for arid regions of the world is a prototypical example of creative thinking.
