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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."
People who take an "unusual" interest in knowing things are dangerous.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Our society encourages people who refuse to learn or take responsibility for their education or that of their children, by throwing money to them every chance we can.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
Wyoming has the smallest population and he didn't win, so he entered in another state.
The rules are there for a reason.
Farnsworth Fusors are fusion reactors that aren't net energy positive. They're just fascinating.
The kids who build fission reactors aren't building them on a large enough scale to risk harm to anyone but themselves. By way of analogy, anyone can make a model rocket engine out of firecrackers, at the risk of blowing their fingers off. Making a solid rocket engine that can boost something into orbit an entirely different story.
We can achieve fusion without too much trouble. The elusive white whale so far has been a sustainable fusion reaction that puts out more energy than you have to put into it.
disqualifying someone just because they failed to win too many times is low
That's not why he was disqualified. He was disqualified because he failed to advance to the next level and then jumped over the state border to try again with the same project in another state. Without this rule, you could have kids entering a dozen different state competitions with the same project, just hoping to get the right set of judges to advance you.
The summary makes it look like he is being held back by bureaucracy, while he's really just using it. He entered ONE project in many fairs. Each of these fairs were lateral contests in a larger competition. Effectively he entered multiple times in the over-all road to the International Fair.
What he did would be like a NCAA team losing in March Madness multiple times, only to move position in the bracket, to try again on each defeat. Sorry, I couldn't think of a car analogy.
The kid was taking the same project to different fairs after failing to qualify. Nothing is stopping him from doing Science. He was more interested in being successful. He wasn't doing this so he could "do more science". He was doing it so he could basically enter more times, giving him an unfair advantage. Say I ran a science fair for a bunch of inner city kids. They worked really hard on their projects. When time for judging comes up, some AP, college-bound kid with a rich ( anything white-collar, to these inner city kids) dad comes in with his garage-built project. He didn't qualify in his home town, but blows these kids out of the water. I would be livid.
However, by seeing the way he plays ball, we know he will fit right in in Academia.
A Farnsworth Fusor is a fusion reactor and can be built at home with a little electrical engineering prowess. Someone needs to do some research before making claims that it can't be done. The problem with that device is that the containment is too good. It's not possible to add fuel once the reaction is started and the reaction produces less energy than is required to start it.
If teleportation of protons (ionized hydrogen, not photons) becomes practical, it may achieve breakeven.
“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.
You left out the part about the school not being aware of the rule and the officials not being aware of the rule and the colleges involved not being aware of the rule all because the rule was not enforced in the past. If it is an obscure rule that nobody is aware of, it is hard to cry foul with an intent to cheat. If it is enforceable, why was only his project disqualified and not all of the duplicated projects? If it was correct, why was the chairwoman dismissed over this?
Maine has a law about how many pounds of cherries must be in a pie before it can be called a cherry pie. Not a pie sold today meets that standard, but the rule is on the books. Missouri doesn't allow margerine to be sold, or at least for it to be called that and yet grocery stores are full of it. There are all sorts of rules on the books that are old and obsolete, just like the rule in question with the science fair. The question people should be asking is why was it enforced all of a sudden and only selectively and if it was all on the up and up, why was the director let go?
It does not take talent to waste power.
It takes talent to build a fusor from scratch.
It takes talent to build scintillators, or even use existing one, to get a spectrum from your reaction to know the exact reactions that are occurring and in what proportions.
It takes talent to keep yourself safe using such a device.
It take drive and motivation and a damn side more vision than most people have to attempt such endeavors. This is the Hello World for a nuclear physicist and I encourage such behavior.
If all you can see is someone "wasting" electricity I think you've missed out on a much larger picture.
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