Engineering Design
- Computing
Fingerprints could help keep kids from dangerous websites
A teen develops a program that estimates age based on someone’s fingers
- Science & Society
Heating up the search for hidden weapons
Using an off-the-shelf camera and an innovative bit of software, a high-school student developed the means to inexpensively detect a hidden weapon.
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Protecting deer with high-pitched noises
After her uncle crashed his truck into a deer, this teen decided to find out if there was a sound that would drive the animals away from roads.
- Tech
Hurricane crisis inspires teen’s water-cleanup system
In the wake of last summer’s devastating Hurricane Maria, a Puerto Rican Intel ISEF finalist developed a do-it-yourself system to create clean drinking water.
- Health & Medicine
Drug-detection system could help partygoers protect themselves
Fed up with people getting unwittingly drugged at parties, a teen designed a special bracelet. It can alert drinkers to the presence of certain hidden drugs.
- Tech
This robot can wash a skyscraper’s windows
Cleaning windows on high-rise buildings can be perilous. But an Australian 12th-grader has created a robot to spare people the risk.
- Health & Medicine
Science-fair finding allows girl to sample a croissant
Some supplements claim they can help people with celiac disease, who cannot digest gluten. But do the pills work? One teen used science to find out.
- Materials Science
New black hair dye uses no harsh chemicals
Scientists have developed a new black-carbon-based hair dye. Instead of using damaging chemicals to dye hair, flexible flakes of carbon coat each strand.
- Physics
An ancient plant inspires a new lab tool
Researchers have designed a lab tool that moves liquids from one place to another by mimicking a plant called a liverwort.
- Chemistry
Hard-to-burn ‘smart’ wallpaper even triggers alarms
Scientists have made wallpaper that won’t easily burn. And embedded nanowires can be linked to a sensor to sound an alarm when the paper gets too hot.
- Chemistry
Banana plant extract can slow how fast ice cream melts
Food scientists now show that adding these tiny plant particles to ice cream may delay the rate at which this treat melts into a soupy mess.
- Materials Science
Light could make some hospital surfaces deadly to germs
A new surfacing material can disinfect itself. Room lighting turns on this germ-killing property, which could make the material attractive to hospitals.
