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."

Comments

fascinating gender differences in the prizes

[retrosurf]

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.