This episode of DNews is brought to you by the U.S. Air Force.
The scientific method is so good it can turn a 13 year old who left bananas on the counter
into an international celebrity!
Every year, Google partners with other global companies and invites kids from all over the
world to showcase their science prowess at the Google Science Fair and the 2014 winners
were announced Monday night! I love the Google Science Fair but it makes me feel super lazy.
It's open to 13-18 year old students who perform an experiment following the scientific method…
they just have to upload a video to explain it!
This year, the grand prize winner is a group of gals from Ireland! Ciara (Kira) Judge,
Emer Hickey, and Sophie Healy-Thow spent three years exploring the warts on a pea plant.
Weird, I know, but good science has humble beginnings. The three students were learning
about the global food crisis in school, and found the pea plant's warts contained rhizobia
bacteria; which benefit the plants by creating ammonia and fixing nitrogen which helps the
plants grow.
These young scientists figured, if rhizobia helped pea plants it might help others too!
They applied the rhizobia to wheat, oats and barley and increased germination rates by
50 percent and crop yields by 75 percent! That's HUGE! And that was three years ago
when they were only 13. Since then they've applied the rhizobia to 13,000 seeds and created
a control field in their hometown with another 3,600 seeds. Yet another example of the microbiome
of a plant revolutionizing farming without chemical pesticides or fertilizers. The bacteria
help by reducing the amount of rot that naturally happens to plant roots in wet climes, like
Ireland!
The 17-18 age group global winner, Haley Todesco of Canada, created an experiment to see if
her method could better clean oil from sand. Imagine that, trying to clean toxic waste
from oil sands extraction. Oil sands are a mixture of sand, clay, water, and petroleum.
Companies are learning to extract the petroleum from the sand and clay, but the byproduct
is highly toxic and is usually left in reservoirs do detoxify for centuries.
Haley grew up in a part of Alberta where these toxic reservoirs are fairly common. She wanted
to find a way to solve the problem. She drew inspiration from European sewage systems of
the 19th century, and created bacteria based biofilms that would eat the acids in the oily
byproduct. She spent two years working on the filtration system and her hard work paid
off. The bioreactors she created are cheap and work fourteen times better than the ones
in use today. This project will shorten the time it takes to detoxify the ponds from "centuries
to decades," she said.
The third global winner is from the United States // USA USA USA // Mahir Garimella's
family went on vacation and returned to a house full of fruit flies! Their mistake proved
fruitful, as Mahir noticed the flies brains were incredible at 3D navigation and dodging
their attempts to capture them! That's amazing! A 1 billion neuron mammal can't grab a 1,000
neuron insect? Eureka! Let's learn from this! From there, 14-year-old Mahir designed a flying
robot based on the cognition of these fruity flies. He designed a visual module inspired
by the flies' and created algorithms for the robot's propellers to mimic the escape behaviors
of these tiny pests.
Practically speaking, the work these kids are doing could quite literally change the
world, they could grow more food, clean up after dirty energy collection, and help create
stable, affordable flying robots for commercial and industrial application. Their inspiration
came from everyday things, from school and from their own silly mistakes… like accidentally
leaving bananas on the counter during a vacation. Science can from from anywhere, and from anyone.
Don't think I didn't notice that 4 of the six winners were girls. Nice job ladies, we
need your science brains too! These were just three of the dozens of projects from all over
the world. Olfactory alarm clocks, computers that help mute people speak, projects to protect
orangutans, power generation, agriculture, engineering… these kids are the future,
and it's awesome.
The U. S. Air Force has an eye on the future, too. I wanna give a quick shout out to them
for making this possible. Fun fact: Air Force was the first to break the sound barrier in
1947! And has been breaking new barriers in science and technology ever since.
So did you ever join a science fair? What was your project? I did a thing about Earthquakes,
and made a diorama and everything! It was fun, but nothing quite as involved as all
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