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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!”
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.
That has nothing to do with this story at all. He entered different lower-level competitions with the same entry in order to maximize his odds of making it to the next level. The problem with allowing this would be that to even the odds, everybody would have to enter every competition, where the same set of projects would be re-evaluated over and over.
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.
This right here, TFS is so distorted. He didn't make it past round 1 in his state, so he jumped the border (with his schools's permission) in order to try again. They had rules against this for a very good reason.
Hold up, wait a minute, let me put some pimpin in 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.
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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