Two student teams from the John Burroughs School were recently announced as regional winners in the 2010 Toshiba/NSTA ExploraVision Awards Program, the world’s largest K-12 student science and technology competition.
They were chosen out of 4,550 teams from across the U.S. and Canada, representing the participation of 13,974 students in this year’s program. The St. Louis students won two out of the four spots from all of Alabama, Arkansas, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas.
The first team consists of seniors Supriya Hobbs, Marvin Mack and Carolina Ramos, coached by senior advisor James Roble. Ramos came up with the idea but the group collectively decided to make the project go to an environmental aspect and they came up with The Electro Boot.
The boot generates electricity. The boot uses electromagnetic induction and power inversion to create potential differences that will charge a battery. The boots portable power generating device allows wearers to harness the energy they expand with every step they take, using magnets and solenoids to generate a “magnetic flux” and charge a built in battery. “We thought this would be ideal for people without easy access to electricity like campers or the military. So if they’re in a bind and don’t have access, it can come from their shoes,” Hobbs said.
The seniors are the only group within their regional that are doing a project that would be considered environmental. Hobbs wants to major in chemical engineering in college, while Mack will major in business.
“I’ll finance something like this,” Mack jokingly said.
Mary Harris, Burroughs freshmen science teacher and coach for the freshmen team, encourages the students to think outside the box when creating futuristic projects.
“So many ideas are out there, and researching the ideas is important because someone may have thought of it already but didn’t follow through,” Harris said.
The second team consists of freshmen Adam Hotaling, Melissa Zhang, Vicki Liu and Xavier Bledsoe, who created the Metaredd a special wristband. The wristband is designed to save the wearer’s life in the event of a catastrophic injury. If the wristband detects the wearer has sustained serious bodily harm, it injects a substance that induces a state of suspended animation or hibernation, helping keep the patient alive while it automatically alerts emergency services via a GPS signal.
The freshmen came up with the idea by debating ideas and researching articles that were still at the developmental stages in the science/engineering field. Liu would like the bangle to be produced and marketed for astronauts or cancer research.
“The coolest part is possibly of it happening,” Liu said.
The ExploraVision competition asks students to imagine ideas for future technologies that could exist in 20 years.
“Just to see something that you came up with actually be created would be amazing,” Hobbs said.
