WY Teen Cut From Science Fair For Entering Too Many

How? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-06-01 04:25 · Score: 3, Interesting

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?

Re:How? by istartedi · 2013-06-01 04:33 · Score: 5, Interesting

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. I seriously doubt these things are producing net energy beyond curiosity wattage. You can probably do some interesting betavoltaic stuff that would generate power at the cost of $50/milliwatt. If you tried to scale it up and generate any significant power, the Feds would eventually find you... probably. I've often wondered if anybody has set one up for "off grid" power. I think there's a 50-50 chance that one back-woods dude is powering his cabin on a huge parcel of land somwhere where it woudln't attract attention. Dangerous as all get-out though. It's so much easier just to use wood stoves, solar panels, etc.

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Re:How? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-06-01 04:34 · 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.
Re:How? by Mister+Transistor · 2013-06-01 05:14 · Score: 4, Funny

Farnsworth Fusors are fusion reactors that aren't net energy positive. They're just fascinating.
Good News, Everyone! My latest reactors are getting much better now, and yes - yes, they ARE fascinating!

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Re:How? by doublebackslash · 2013-06-01 15:59 · 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.

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d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e /boot/vmlinuz

All the better.. by Hans+Lehmann · 2013-06-01 04:25 · Score: 4, Interesting

He won't lose any high school credit because he wasn't able to compete in his nth science fair. But just think how good his resume after college will read when it says that he was disqualified because he entered too many science fairs in high school.

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Re:All the better.. by AthanasiusKircher · 2013-06-01 04:51 · 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.
Re:All the better.. by Samantha+Wright · 2013-06-01 04:56 · Score: 4, Interesting

Well, that's what the rule's for; to prevent students from milling through county fairs in order to qualify for the state fair. (Perhaps the idea is that it would let a student with a lot of funding go into a low-income county and exercise an unfair advantage? Although that would just even itself out at the state level anyway...) In this case, though, the student was entering into fairs in two different states, (if you consider Wyoming and South Dakota different) and the rule wasn't worded in a way that considered that. The person responsible was quietly let go, though, so... yeah.
This story has nothing to do with the kid's project, if anyone was wondering.

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Re:All the better.. by Dcnjoe60 · 2013-06-01 05:05 · Score: 4, Interesting

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.
While what you say is technically true, the way you say it implys that he did this to circumvent the system. From the article itself, it was his high school that entered both the Wyoming and the South Dakota events and they, along with the people at both Universities involved were unaware of the rule. It seems like this was one of those rules put in place to prevent cheating that had unintended consequences. Even the article states the rule is looking at being rewritten because of it.
Re:All the better.. by nick_davison · 2013-06-01 05:28 · Score: 5, Informative

“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.
Re:All the better.. by Dcnjoe60 · 2013-06-01 05:43 · Score: 3, Insightful

“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?
Re:All the better.. by ceoyoyo · 2013-06-01 06:18 · Score: 4, Informative

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.
Re:All the better.. by Solandri · 2013-06-01 08:21 · Score: 3, Interesting

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.

This story is the round-robin vs. single elimination argument. From what I gather, the ISEF use a single elimination system. That means (to use an extreme example) even if your science experiment is the second best in the world, you can be eliminated in the first round if the eventual winner happens to also go to your school. The "you can only enter one science fair" rule enforces that possibility. That's what happened to me - my best friend in high school was #1 in math and the sciences and I was #2. He won all the awards, scholarships, accolades, and recognition. I got... nice pieces of paper congratulating me on my 2nd place finish. Until I moved and went to a different high school, and easily beat out all the other students in math and the sciences.

When practical, a round-robin system is much better as it allows you to appraise a wider range of competitors head-to-head. Then you can take the top 2^n candidates from the round-robin and put them into a single elimination "finals" if you wish. What you call a "loophole", others could legitimately see as a mechanism to bypass this inherent unfairness of the single elimination system.

All major sporting competitions use round-robins before the single elimination final rounds. Tennis appears to use purely single elimination, but they track each player's win/loss ratios against different opponents (equivalent to round-robin results) to give them a ranking, then use the ranking to seed the single elimination tournaments to make sure the top seeds do not meet each other early in the tournament. Another approach is to use single elimination, but have a loser's bracket for everyone who loses once. Then the final is between the person who goes through undefeated vs. the person who wins the loser's bracket.

All of these systems were designed to overcome this inherent major flaw of the single elimination system. So it's a bit naive to declare this story over and uninteresting simply because the student/school broke a rule apparently designed to enforce that flaw. Unless they have some mechanism to allow outstanding runner-ups to enter the next level of science fair competition, I'd say it's a bad rule.

Definitely somebody to watch... by fustakrakich · 2013-06-01 04:29 · Score: 4, Insightful

People who take an "unusual" interest in knowing things are dangerous.

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Re:And yet... by timeOday · 2013-06-01 04:34 · 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.

Re:A working fusion reactor??? by Analog+Penguin · 2013-06-01 04:35 · Score: 4, Insightful

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.

Farnsworth–Hirsch fusor by mbone · 2013-06-01 04:36 · Score: 5, Interesting

The Farnsworth–Hirsch fusor is decades old, relatively easy to build (I know someone who built one in his garage), available commercially (as a neutron source) and is generally considered to be not a candidate for fusion power.

Given that the name of the student is Conrad Farnsworth, I have to wonder if there is a family connection, but the article does not go into that.

Re:And yet... by jlechem · 2013-06-01 04:39 · Score: 4, Insightful

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.

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This isn't because he is doing too MORE Science. by dmomo · 2013-06-01 04:51 · Score: 4, Insightful

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.

Re:And yet... by I'm+New+Around+Here · 2013-06-01 05:00 · Score: 4, Informative

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.

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Re:Fusion Reactor by Maury+Markowitz · 2013-06-01 05:21 · Score: 3, Informative

> 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.

Re:Fusion Reactor by Daniel+Dvorkin · 2013-06-01 05:44 · Score: 4, Interesting

That's the kid's own website, right?

No, it's not. You may have been confused because his name is Farnsworth, which isn't a particularly common name; as another poster said, it would be interesting to know if there's a family connection with the Farnsworth the fusor is named for. Fusor.net, AFAICT, is a site run by and for fusor hobbyists, people who like to tinker with the kind of machines this kid built.

And for those who are saying "Oh, he just downloaded some tutorials off the net"--well, if you could or would have done something like that as a teenager, good for you, but most people couldn't or wouldn't. It's not groundbreaking research, but putting together a working fusor is a pretty neat accomplishment for a high-school kid.

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Re:Bad comparision by jythie · 2013-06-01 08:01 · Score: 4, Informative

Nope, fusion is right. If I recall correctly he built a 'fusor', a type of fusion reactor that does not even come close to producing more energy then you put in, but does preform the actual reaction. Quite a few people have been building them as hobby projects, though I believe they are also being looked into as a way of producing medically useful isotopes.

Math is hard by chrismcb · 2013-06-01 11:48 · Score: 3, Informative

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.

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WY Teen Cut From Science Fair For Entering Too Many

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