A Look At Intel ISEF 2004

crl620 writes "Just this past Friday marked the end of the 2004 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (Intel ISEF). This year's ISEF took place in Portland, Oregon with more than 1,200 participants. Over $3 million was given out and three grand winners left with $50,000. Winning projects include a homemade Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM) and a brain-computer interface for the muscularly disabled. My picture diary of this huge event can be found here."

Comments

damn

[fresh27]

i made battery out of a lemon and some pennies, but i didn't get past the first round.

Re:damn

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Did you consider compressing the helium? Compressed gasses take up less space, so you would have needed a much smaller envelope.

Re:damn

[AKAImBatman]

Did you consider compressing the helium? Compressed gasses take up less space, so you would have needed a much smaller envelope.

I'm not completely up to speed on airship technology, but my understanding is that this presents two problems:

1. To compress the helium, you need a stronger gasbag structure. Making the gasbag stronger makes it heavier, thus defeating the purpose of compressing it.

2. Compressing the gas simply adds more gas for the same amount of displacement. Thus you've actually made the blimp or rigid airship heavier instead of lighter.

Keep in mind that airships work by displacing air like boats displace water. The only reason that helium helps generate lift is that it adds structural integrity to the airframe/gasbag while being lighter than if it had been filled with air. The absolute BEST airframe is a complete vacuum. However, an absolute vacuum would require much stronger materials (1-1.5 atmospheres of pressure on the materials vs. a pressure of .01 atmospheres in a standard blimp). These stronger materials would of course be heavier and thus defeat any gains you would get by creating a vacuum.

Re:damn

[nacturation]

Did you consider compressing the helium? Compressed gasses take up less space, so you would have needed a much smaller envelope.

Even more efficient than helium, a really light particle, is a total vacuum which has no particles. To make an efficient lifting device, you can figure out the amount of total vacuum you would need to lift 250kg. Essentially, you would need the equivalent amount as the displacement of 250kg of air. For sake of argument, let's say this is 250 cubic meters. The beauty of this is that a vacuum, having no particles, compresses down to nothing. In fact, you could compress 250 cubic meters of vacuum down to nothing and store it inside the object you are trying to lift!

This amazing technology was used by the Egyptians in building the pyramids and by whomever built Stonehenge. The object itself thus becomes its own lifting mechanism. Ever wonder why modern man has been unable to reproduce such engineering feats? They've been unable to harvest the power of compressible vacuums to move great masses. However, I have shared this new secret technology with you in the hopes that you too will build marvels of the Earth.

The trick, of course, is not to store too much compressed vacuum inside an object or it'll just float away forever. King Tut was really pissed when the engineers first made that mistake!

Re:Brain-Computer interface?

[gandalphthegreen]

Don't the Borg use a brain-computer interface to network their people together to become one?

The Borg aren't real. Yes I know you know that, but I think it's worth pointing out to put the tin-foil-hat arguement in perspective.

Browsing through the pics...

[Serk]

Browsing through the pics I had one thought that kept going through my head:

Cool! Someone even geekier than myself!!

But than cold reality crept back, and pointed out that, while the taker of those picture might be geekier than myself, he isn't MUCH geekier than me...

This is a great, exciting experience.

[Richard Mills]

I participated in two ISEF's (1994 and 1995) when I was in high school. I think that very few events I have participated in conveyed the excitement of doing science and participating in the scientific community like those ISEFs have. I'm just about finished with my Ph.D. now, and of course I've been to plenty of "real" scientific conferences, but none have captured the excitement that I experienced at those ISEF's.

If anyone involved in organizing the ISEF reads Slashdot, I hope they read this testimonial. Participating in ISEF was very important for me and many of the other students, and the experience really helped cement my decision to pursue a career in the sciences. Thanks!