HS-ETS1-3
Evaluate a solution to a complex real-world problem based on prioritized criteria and trade-offs that account for a range of constraints, including cost, safety, reliability, and aesthetics, as well as possible social, cultural, and environmental impacts.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Materials Science
Cool Jobs: Big future for super small science
Scientists using nanotechnology grow super-small but very useful tubes with walls no more than a few carbon atoms thick. Find out why as we meet three scientists behind this huge new movement in nanoscience.
- Agriculture
Ditching farm pollution — literally
An Indiana project shows how fighting fertilizer runoff can save farmers money, protect wild habitats and prevent harmful algae blooms.
- Planets
Mini-sats: The trick to spying Earth-bound asteroids?
NASA is supposed to begin nonstop screening by 2020 for all asteroids that could pose a threat to Earth. Some astronomers now think the only way to affordably meet that deadline is by using mini-satellites
- Computing
3-D Recycling: Grind, melt, print!
A new 2-in-1 desktop machine quickly recycles plastic trash into low-cost 3-D printer ‘ink’ at the push of a button.
- Health & Medicine
Vision-ary high tech
New devices are being developed to improve, restore or preserve the vision of people with eye diseases, such as glaucoma and macular degeneration. One device is a telescopic contact lens than can be zoomed with a wink.
- Brain
Magnets may make helmets safer
Magnets in sports helmets could repel players’ heads as they move toward a collision. This should reduce the risk of the hard hits that lead to concussions.
- Tech
Wind power is looking up — to the clouds
Placing wind turbines high in the sky could let them harvest power from the faster, more reliable winds found at altitude.
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Food can make an appetizing science fair project
Many students think they need a laboratory or special equipment for a winning research project. But finalists at the Broadcom MASTERS competition showed food-based research may require little more than your home kitchen
