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High Schooler Is Awarded $100,000 For Research
wired_LAIN writes "A teenager from Oklahoma was awarded $100,000 in the Intel Science Talent Search competition for building an inexpensive and accurate spectrograph that can identify the specific characteristics of different kinds of molecules. While normal spectrographs can cost between $20,000 and $100,000 to build, her spectrograph cost less than $500. The 40 finalists' projects were judged by a panel of 12 scientists, all well established in their respective fields. Among the judges were Vera Rubin, who proved Dark Matter, and Andrew Yeager, one of the pioneers of stem cell research."
Needs a thousand more students like her! Way to go!
I want to see how she did it.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Nitpick: That should probably read "provided evidence for the existence dark matter."
As an ex science fair participant, I cannot begin to say how cool this is.
Dog is my co-pilot.
didn't take long for you idiots to start objectifying her and making critical comments on her appearance. is it all that porn watching that makes you think that's appropriate? that females are just some product you can rate "Hot or Not"? she's obviously brilliant (and now, wealthy). you think you can drag her down with your hateful crap? are you so intimidated that you have to pretend she'd give a shit about your asshole opinion? let's see how hot you are, dork.
Yeah, I think you're an idiot.
Yeah, her dad was just holding on to this research so her daughter could win some high-school science competition.
/sarcasm
a couple of years?
$100,000 will get you all the way through your masters now days. Assuming you can maintain some semblance of a GPA.
"Just Smile and Nod." --Huck
Valuable in the same way a $10-60 microscope works more or less the same way as a $2,000 one with Zeiss lenses. Or a profilometer being made from $200 in parts. iow, she didn't really invent anything, but put together a device for cheaper.
I don't disagree the $100,000 commercial devices could be made substantially cheaper, probably 10-fold. But most of those devices are calibrated, certified back to NIST metrological standards, include sweeping warranty and support, and probably a software library for interpretation. Don't forget to add in expertise, time, field testing, manufacturing overhead, and profit.
In fact, most scientific instruments, if broken down, are rather simple. NMR, interferometers, lock-in amplifiers, etc. are not that hard to put together if that's *all* you are doing. But to do it yourself, is labor and expertise expensive, and that's really what you are paying for--convenience. You want to do research. You don't want to be reinventing the wheel (not that there is not value in that, as understanding the tools helps a lot esp. in formulating better tools and understanding the limits of research).
The reason her device is cool is that it's no small feat to put together, not the invention of it, but the creativity in reduplicating something that isn't really easy to do. One website I had thought about putting up was a wiki on how to produce various scientific instrumentation much as she did with this one particular one, but time is a constraint for me, and surprisingly MAKE magazine seems to be more and more encroaching on covering these sorts of things as time goes along.
Anyways, I'm not trying to minimize her accomplishment, but it isn't exactly a new invention.
It goes the other way too. Ask a philosophy student to explain lift and drag and see how far you get.
Slashdot: the only place where you can make a crappy joke and have it be misinterpreted as a statement of intellectual superiority
What do you expect with a subject line of "Um"? It's the Slashdot hint code for "Hey everybody, I'm an asshole! Now read this!"
Two, I notice a complete lack of representation by the "soft" sciences. Is it because the people writing the grants share the same disdain for disciplines that lack explanatory power as everyone else, or is it because it's easier to set up a biology program than a sociology program? I suspect a little of both--you probably need far more social context than an 18-year-old will have to pursue studies of voter demographics (not to mention the data acq is probably beyond their capabilities).
Perhaps because "soft sciences" are real sciences. Sure they may use scientific method, but they sure as hell don't have the same accuracy. They haven't yet accumulated the same amount of data as the "hard" (or I prefer real) sciences.
I mean, take Marxism for example. Historical materialism is claimed to be scientific, it may well use scientific method, but it sure as hell ain't science.
I wank in the shower.
All the boys worked on mathematics based tasks, and
all the girls were working on physical sciences, or
at least more applied problems.
Well, there's that one well rounded kid that applied
mathematics to the triangulation of geosynchronous
satellites, but the other guys were heavy math geeks.
You're kidding, right? Some people are smarter than others. It might not fit your notion of "fairness", but it's the way the world is. Cope.
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
I'm not intimidated. I'm angry. At the constant twittering of porn-addled assholes that think women aren't human beings. Since she's female, some of you people say her work isn't real, she didn't do it herself, she bought it from a catalogue. The assholes act like her only function is to be a receptacle and damn, she's just not hawt enough to beat off to so she's a total failure. I'm sick of this all-too-predictable bullshit.
In fairness, the OP was observing that her intellectual accomplishment is "hot".
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I begin seeing where the term "feminazi" comes from...
I'm going to try to be as neutral as possible here, which leads me to say you're being an idiot. This is operating purely under the assumption that all of this is over a fucking joke, which as far as I can tell it is (if it isn't, see below paragraph). Anyone looking at how you're acting over a joke is likely either laughing their asses off or shaking their head, saddened by the current state of humanity.
Now, if it isn't a joke... you're still overreacting. What ever happened to being the better person? I'd have plenty more to say if the initial remark was serious, and I'd even partially be on your side, but I'm pretty sure that it was a joke (though perhaps devoid of humor) that started all this bullshit.
One final note: I honestly think the "didn't do it herself" would come whether it was a guy or a girl. Maybe that's just me, though.
Oh, and before you accuse me of being "another woman-hater" or whatever crappy insult you come up with, I'm an equal-opportunity asshole - if I have something to say, I don't care if you're male, female, both, or neither, I'm gonna say it.
*watches his karma take yet another hit...*
How is this ANY different than the genius employed by hyper-mega-mart corp. to make similar advancements? Entrepreneurs profit from inventions. The inventors are generally happier in the garage/lab avoiding all the BS, politics and sales involved in bringing the product to market.
I bet! Mom & Dad never helped at all!
I honestly don't see why this is flamebait. It could have been said in a better way, especially since it seems to have been misunderstood. It is important for people to understand that parents and social/economic status matter when it comes to academic and scientific achievement, especially in the type of school system we have. That's not to say that individual effort is not needed in the more positive cases or that it cannot overcome the negative cases. But it is true that the more tools you have in life and the better and more stable your learning environment is the easier it is to achieve something. It does not mean that this person's achievement was any less spectacular, just as it is still awesome that John Nash was doing Calculus at age 7 even though the fact his parents were academics who encouraged their son and exposed him to everything he seemed able to handle or have an interest in when he showed interest.
John Nash growing up in an abusive home where no textbooks were available and learning was frowned upon would have a tough row to hoe even as a genius that he was. He would probably be able to achieve a lot because of his drive and intellectual fortitude, but you never know. Not only would he have to overcome the negative aspects of his upbringing, he would not have some of the formative experiences that led him on the path he ended up on. He might not learn to read at an early age because neither his parents nor the public school would encourage reading at an early age or advancing in that skill. He also might not therefore have read _Men_of_Mathematics_ which was the book that most inspired him to become a mathemetician. Perhaps between a bad upbringing and the mental problems he had, he would have ended up in that negative feedback loop so many left behind children find themselves in, where the outside world (especially school, their parents, and other students) gives them a constant reinforcement of the idea that they are "no good" or substandard and will never achieve anything, and their own struggles, when they find the strength to struggle, seem to reinforce it as well and lend fodder to the fire until they either lapse into a kind of apathy toward achievement or take the further course of attempting to achieve something completely negative (addict, prostitute, thug, etc).
Children need encouragement and guidance to grow properly and it is proven that the more successful children in school tend also to be those students whose parents are most involved in their education, and vice versa. Parents that don't have or take time for working with their kids or for whatever reason don't give the right kind of structure and experience for a healthy childhood will tend to have children with problems in school. This is what educators have been telling us, too. I think reform is necessary for the system, and I know parents are resistant to any suggestion that they could have anything to do with problems they have with their children, but consider the fact that this is the portion of the equation parents are most able to change.
It is obvious to me that whereas this person was clearly gifted they also had parents who supported her endeavours. In fact she is quoted in TFA:
Masterman said she has been interested in science "ever since I was little. I can't remember ever not being interested." She credits her parents with encouraging her.
Poorly stated I will give you, but what the poster said was true and was probably not meant as flamebait. It does not seem like flamebait to me.
a couple of years?
$100,000 will get you all the way through your masters now days. Assuming you can maintain some semblance of a GPA.
He said at a good University. Granted less expensive schools can actually provide a competitive education but someone like this is probably going to be thinking Princeton or MIT or something, and just about any college in that neck of the woods will put a serious dent in $100,000 pretty fast. Certainly the ones I named would; I think "a couple of years" is about right, considering, and it may in fact be too optimistic depending on how much other cash is involved.
You seem to be neglecting the power of compound interest over the next 40 years. If she can build a spectrograph, she can probably figure out what a safe investment vehicle is.
I got the parent info from the Winners page. If you read near the end of each paragraph it'll say "The daughter of" or "The son of" and will mention Dr or Drs, if the parents have their Ph.D.
I think it would be hard to argue that genetics played a point in how smart they are. I think in terms of hardware, what really did it was their upbringing. If when they were younger (prior to puberty) they were challenged and encouraged to seek knowledge, think, and explore, its likely their brain was wired more for that kind of stuff (reasoning and logic). Genetics may play some part, but I believe the environment will win out in the end.