Kids Today

If you haven’t taken a look at the semifinalists for the Google Science Fair you still have a few days left to view the submissions and cast your votes! At stake is a $50,000 scholarship from Google, along with an opportunity to apprentice with Google or one of their partner organizations. There are 60 very interesting entries spread across three categories and covering just about every discipline of science. Suffice to say that the projects went beyond the paper-mache volcano. Some examples include:

• A portable solar autoclave for easy sterilization of medical tools in the third world.
• A proposal to utilize gold nanoparticles for the treatment of prostate cancer.
• Building a conductometric biosensor from scratch to detect food-borne illnesses such as Salmonella, using readily available materials.
• A new type of farm implement designed to harvest and thresh crops that requires little to no fuel and can be built from easily available resources and materials.

Impressive stuff indeed! Especially considering all of these submissions came from 13-18 year-olds, a time when a lot of us were just trying to get a grasp on puberty. Kudos to Google and their partners for this project: CERN, the LEGO Group, National Geographic, and Scientific American. And of course, best of luck to all the entrants! Surely there are some incredibly proud parents, teachers, and mentors behind them.