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WY Teen Cut From Science Fair For Entering Too Many
An anonymous reader writes " A Wyoming high school student who built a nuclear reactor in his dad's garage was disqualified from the International Science and Engineering Fair this month on a technicality.' His crime: competing in too many science fairs."
That's not quite accurate.
He went to the science fair in Wyoming, conducted by the University of Wyoming, which is a 'State Level' fair. He didn't place.
His school also attends a 'Regional Level' fair, sponsored by the South Dakota School of Mines. He did place at that one.
He get disqualified from the International Science and Engineering Fair because he went to a regional fair after attending a state fair.
If those two events had simply happened in the reverse order, he would have been fine. It's not his fault the two events are scheduled the way they are.
Also, his town is only 3 miles from the South Dakota border, so it's not like he crossed five states to try to cheat the system. For all we know, students who live in South Dakota attend his high school.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
> If teleportation of protons (ionized hydrogen, not photons) becomes practical, it may achieve break-even
It is extremely unlikely that any non-equilibrum reactor will ever reach break even. This includes the fusor, Forward's design, focus fusion, and many other designs. The bremsstrahlung is simply too great for any realistically sized reactor to stop thermal transport out of the core more rapidly than the reaction rate can replace it.
“The South Dakota fair is close and gives our kids another opportunity to present their work,” Scribner said. “I think that was some of our motivation, and it did give our kids another chance to qualify.”
The school absolutely used multiple fairs to get extra chances to qualify - they outright say so. And that's exactly why the rule's in place.
They put the rule in place to stop people failing at one using other fairs as a chance to succeed at another. He failed at one then used another to succeed. The school uses the second fair for exactly that purpose. And then they're shocked when they discover there was a rule to prevent the loophole they thought they'd discovered. That's not an unintended consequence. That's the intended consequence.
It was not enforced in the past because nobody doing the state fair jumping had qualified for the ISEF before. It's in the article.
The US science fair system is poorly organized, which is why things like this happen. It's disappointing for the kid but he did not qualify at his own state fair anyway.
Almost anything is a nuclear reactor if you play with the definition. There are isotopes decaying in my thumb right now. It's a nuclear reactor.
But it's not a fusion reactor. If you want to trivialize what the kid did, at least compare apples to apples.
Both TFS and TFA make it sound like the kid competed in LOTS of events, and kept entering until he won. He did no such thing. He competed in two events. One a regional, the other a state. Just like the rules said he could. He just entered the state one first. Because he qualified from the regional to the international, it doesn't even sound like it is a case of regional qualifies for state which qualifies for international. Especially since he went straight to the state, and then qualified from the regional. The rule allows for two fairs, he went to two fairs. It just happened that one of the regional fairs, was in a different state (yet closer than apparently regional in his home state)
If you can qualify for the international straight from a regional, then the rule is stupid.