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WY Teen Cut From Science Fair For Entering Too Many

Posted by timothy on from the you-can't-science-in-here-this-is-the-science-room dept.

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."

4 of 204 comments (clear)

  1. Re:How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I've heard of several teens building nuclear reactors in their garages it seems. How are they accomplishing this, when foreign states seem to have such difficulty?

    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.

  2. Re:And yet... by timeOday · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  3. Re:All the better.. by AthanasiusKircher · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  4. Re:How? by doublebackslash · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    md5sum /boot/vmlinuz
    d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e /boot/vmlinuz