Growing up my perception of the science fair was homemade volcanoes that would erupt a red mixture of baking soda and vinegar. I don't remember if I took part in them, but this is what I imagined the projects would be like. Until last week that was still my perception and then I spent two days at the Intel Science Fair in Los Angeles as a judge. My perception has officially been shattered. These high schoolers are the ones that you read about it the news as developing new cures to diseases or working on sequencing the genome. The projects that I saw were so far beyond me that I had a hard time understanding what they were even doing. You can read about the winners online and that's as easy as a Google search. However, there were two things that I really enjoyed the simple elegant projects that were based on a simple concept and the passion of the students about what they were doing.
One student proposed a design for a turbine to sit in the median of a highway and using the wind generated by passing cars it would power the lights on the highway. He didn't design the whole thing, but he measured the wind speeds at different heights and proposed his idea for the amount of power such winds would generate. It was such a simple concept and idea.
I also met four individuals presenting three separate projects whose collective enthusiasm will stay with me forever. One boy was from India, another was from Sri Lanka, and the two girls were from Utah. They didn't all speak English as their first language but they clearly spoke a common language. When they were all telling me about their projects they were literally dancing with excitement. They shared the same look, the same tone, and the same passion. It was beautiful to see and bear witness to. Three of the four one prizes for their projects and I hope that all four will continue to pursue this passion.
No comments:
Post a Comment