White House announces the kids and projects of its 2016 Science Fair
Among the participants:
- Kimberly (9) and Rebecca Yeung (11), who launched a camera-equipped balloon into the stratosphere with a little help from GoPro.
- Hannah Herbst (15), who’s working on a device that harvests power from ocean currents.
- A whole gaggle of Girl Scouts from Troop 1484 in St. Louis, who created a safe way to dispose of Styrofoam, then realized the byproduct was a cool adhesive, and patented it.
- Amro Halwah (18), Stephen Mwingria (17) and Si Ya Ni (18), who got tired of trash fires delaying their subway trips (!) and made a robot that cleans the rails.
- Yashaswini Makaram (17), who created a way to identify a phone’s owner and unlock it based just on the way they pick it up.
- Hari Bhimaraju (12), who made “The Elementor,” a tool for teaching visually impaired students about the periodic table.
- Gabriel Mesa (16), who used graphene to create a non-chemical, non-toxic battery.
- Shemar Coombs (19), who made a 3D-printed cell phone case that integrates a headphone wrapping feature.
And a whole bunch more. Honestly, a lot of these are such cool ideas that it’s embarrassing I haven’t heard of them before. I’m really looking forward to the Science Fair, which will stream live at Whitehouse.gov on the 13th at 5 PM ET.
![](data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,<svg height="145" width="187" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" version="1.1"/>)
![](data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,<svg height="105" width="187" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" version="1.1"/>)
![](data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,<svg height="140" width="187" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" version="1.1"/>)
![](data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,<svg height="125" width="187" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" version="1.1"/>)
