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Do you think of volcanoes when you think of science fair? Well think again. The finalists at the Intel ISEF presented some of the most interesting inventions ever from a bionic arm to a low cost solar refrigerator. See what our young inventors have created. |
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Watch out below
Enda Young and Brendan Quinn traveled to Louisville from the city Maghera in Northern Ireland. Both finalists are nineteen years old and are seniors at St. Patrick's College. In their engineering team project, the team developed a project for the Northern Ireland power company to reduce bird droppings resulting from birds on power wires. Apart from the aesthetic impact on buildings, there are more serious implications in terms of physical damage and health risks from the corrosive effect of the uric acid on surfaces and the presence of pathogenic bacteria. Young and Quinn developed a self-propelled robot that rides high voltage power making it difficult for birds to land and perch on the wires, thus reducing bird droppings.. The invention developed by the two students proved to be much more effective in keeping birds off of power lines than previous devices. |
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Robot Mapping
Laura Wong is 15 years old and attends Villa, Victoria Academy in Ewing New Jersey. Wong built a robot with the ability to sense and the capability to traverse an area of any size while avoiding obstacles and creating a 2D map of the area without use intervention. The robot works in conjunction with a computer that maintains the map and a software program provides route planning for the robot. |
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Keeping Cool
Bradley Mathews hails from Johannesburg, South Africa where he is a senior at Northcliff High School. Mathews developed a refrigeration system that runs off of solar power and used forced evaporation to maintain cold temperatures. This low cost refrigerator has the potential to allow storage of vaccines and food supplies in places, such as Third World countries without electricity. Mathews has received a patent issued in his home country. |
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Bionic Arm and Hand
Mathew Corvese from Warwick, Rhode Island is 16, a junior and attends Bishop Hendricken School. Corvese's Engineering project set out to see how accurately he could replicate the simple motions of the human hand and arm through a prosthetic device through the use of Shape Memory Alloy (SMA). SMA was used with a lever and pulley system to flex the PVC pipe fingers. The device proved to be strong and provided good maneuverability and flexibility proving that SMA could be used in prosthetic devices. |
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Mine Finder
Andrew Murphy, 17 and a junior at Plano West Senior High School in Plano, Texas, developed a new robotic mine detection system. This system uses a group of small metal detectors to create a computer-generated image of the minefield. The system is inexpensive to build and uses existing off-the-shelf materials making it easily affordable for humanitarian organizations around the world. |
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Dont Breathe the Rubber on the Road
David Joseph is 15 and attends The Linsly School in Wheeling, West Virginia. Through his research he determined that the rubber particulates that come off of tires as they wear are small enough to enter the deepest portion of the human lung. Joseph developed collection devices that when mounted on a car, capture airborne rubber particles as they wear off of the tire tread. The devices successfully filtered rubber particulates from the air in the laboratory as well as on the road. And may prove to be a significant way to reduce particulates and their harmful health effects. |
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