Slashdot Mirror
Teen's Biofuel Invention Turns Algae Into Fuel
Lasrick writes "Evie Sobczak won a trip to Jet Propulsion Lab for her biofuel invention: 'For a fifth-grade science fair, Evie Sobczak found that the acid in fruit could power clocks; she connected a cut-up orange to a clock with wire and watched it tick. In seventh grade, she generated power by engineering paddles that could harness wind. And in eighth grade, she started a project that eventually would become her passion: She wanted to grow algae and turn it into biofuel.'"
to be a significant power sources without either destroying foodcrops or natural ecologicies, or get more than about 5% efficiency - less than a solar panel.
Makes for a cute story though, as do all these biofuel stories. Keeps everyone hopeful, despite the complete silliness.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
I think all that means is she knows more about science than the local-newspaper reporter who wrote TFA.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
One more invention, and she would have been disqualified from any further participation
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
And by that, I mean both the Tamba Bay and the Slashdot article. There is nothing anywhere about how she got the biodiesel from algae, which at this point is the only interesting thing about the experiment. It mentions photoautotrophic cultivation, which just means that the algae use light to grow, which is a big no-shit-Sherlock. It mentions osmotic sonication, which is a fancy word for using sound waves and osmotic principles to get the detergent into the cell innards. Google searches turn up no indication of how the experiment was set up, what the actual results or anything of interest. The best thing I got was a list of who else won what other categories at the fair.
So we have two utterly known principles being applied to biodiesel generation from algae, and somehow this makes news as a breakthrough. Yawn.
Which leads me to my second rant: the insistence of news organizations to hail science fair winners as geniuses who solved a problem no one else could (I'm specifically looking at the stories about the kid arranging solar cells in a tree shape). It completely oversells the experiment, turns the kid into something they're not, and covers up the actual interesting item: that you can do cool science in your home that goes beyond baking powder volcanoes. It could even be science that is relevant to an existing topic of interest to actual scientists, which should put the kids on a good trajectory to actually solving the problem. But no, instead we are presented with kid geniuses who solve world hunger, and I get to fend off all kinds of dumb questions and comments about science, the state of technology and why we're not listening more to kids.
Now get off my lawn.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Wood is a form of biofuel.
See what I did there?
Does "biofuel" still seem like a mysterious magical term.
was disappointed when I couldn't find out anything about what she actually did that was interesting other than recreate existing processes
In 5th grade, she figured out something obvious. In 7th grade, she figured out another something obvious. In 8th grade, she started thinking about something non-obvious, spent 4 years developing it and then used it to win an internationally renowned competition sponsored by Intel. The importance of the 5th/7th grade anecdotes is that interest and achievement in science isn't an immediate phenomenon...it has to be cultivated from an early age if you want to see results by high school or college.
Some weeks ago there was a story in /. about students who discovered that there might be something going or nearby WiFi hotspots that impact the growth of cress. What is the status of that project today? Have they conducted additional experiments?
she connected a cut-up orange to a clock with wire and watched it tick
A Clock Work with Orange? :)
When the only comment scored 5 claims the article is crap. I guess we can trust the wisdom of crowd and skip the paper.
Shorthand for "she showed interest in basic science at school".... and now she has made an original discovery of her own.
Evie Sobczak found that the acid in fruit could power clocks; she connected a cut-up orange to a clock with wire and watched it tick.
Cue the mocking voice of GLADOS describing about everybody was turning in potato batteries for the fair.
100 fat stupid big-mouth know-it-all towering assholes criticize working invention in a nasal smartass tone of voice while ramming another mom-prepared hot pocket into their distended fat neckbeard-encrusted sneering faces.
The only thing that makes threads like this tolerable is the certain knowledge that nobody will ever take any of you seriously about anything.
:... is that the energy they generate actually cost DOUBLE of what fossil fuel energy cost.
So you're saying that we just have to wait until the fossil fuel cost doubles?
Ezekiel 23:20
What, can she (or her parents) actually read or something? Amazing! Seriously, nothing revolutionary here, all of these were invented by someone else.
"I call it a Wind-mill!"
"I call it biome-diesel"
next:
"I call it a photo-panel!"
There is nothing "invented" here. Its not like she woke up and thought that algae could be used to make fuel.
Companies have been researching this for decades, and the issue comes back down to the effort to grow algae often consumer more energy then what they produce. The real challenge is not that algae can product hydrocarbons for fuel, its about how to do it at the same or better efficiency then getting oil out of the ground.
Its a nice puff piece, but ignorant "science" reporters think this kid is brilliant and did something nobody though of before, all she did was read about it and created a diorama or something. Using acid in fruit could power clocks, done. Wind power, done. Growing algae for bio-fuel, done.
That kids a phony!
But I can't really blame her; what is worse is when adults are amazed at her "inventions".
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Seriously are you freakin' kidding me? Yes... Yes.. YES everyone's child is a freaking super-genius. Right. Oh... and gads... this one can actualy READ by the 8th grade. How wonderfully miraculous.