Engineering Design
- Brain
Studying? Don’t answer that text!
Homework time? Put away the cell phone. Responding to texts gets in the way of learning and test-taking, teen researchers show.
- Earth
Keeping roofs cooler to cut energy costs
Cool it! A cheap paint-on coating for roofing shingles could help reduce a home’s heating bills and might even trim urban ozone levels, a teen shows.
- Tech
Teens want to make windshield wipers obsolete
Windshield wipers often can’t keep up with the rain. High-intensity air sprays might one day take their place, according to research by two teens.
- Climate
Carbon dioxide levels rise fast and high
The buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is rising faster than at any time since dinosaurs roamed the Earth. The burning of fossil fuels is largely to blame.
- Animals
Return of the bed bug
Bed bugs have staged a comeback over the past 15 years. The bloodsucking parasites succeeded through a combination of evolution and luck.
- Tech
Stepping out with a smarter cane
Many older people trip and fall on uneven ground. A Colorado teen has designed a ‘smart’ cane to help seniors avoid dangerous obstacles.
- Tech
Making cents of sounds
Some people give up when a vending machine rejects their money. But one student decided to turn his frustration into inspiration. Through research, he showed how to identify coins by the sounds they make.
- Health & Medicine
Bones: Custom cushioning helps heal a bad break
If the stiff casts encasing broken limbs included an inflatable air bladder instead of a soft lining, costly and painful complications experienced by some patients during healing might be avoided, two teens reported at the 2015 Intel ISEF competition.
- Brain
Hands-free but still distracted
When people aren’t distracted, they can see a traffic light change very quickly. But a teen scientist now shows that texting — even with a hands-free device — gets dangerously slow.
- Animals
What’s the buzz? A new mosquito lure
Broadcasting a fake buzz can lure male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes away from females. That could reduce populations of these annoying — and disease-causing — insects, reports a teen at the 2015 Intel ISEF competition.
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Cookie Science 16: If I had to do it all again
My second cookie experiment didn’t turn out quite like I planned. Here’s what I would do differently, knowing what I do now.
- Chemistry
Cool Jobs: Saving precious objects
Museum conservators are experts at protecting and restoring precious objects. Along with art or history, many also have studied chemistry, physics, archaeology or other scientific fields.
