There was a time when high school science projects involved baking soda volcanoes dropping egg-filled containers from helicopters. That may actually still be the case, but not for a batch of 1,600 high school students at this year’s 2013 Intel International Science.
18-year-old Eesha Khare developed a super-capacitor with a special nano-structure that allows more energy within a lower volume. It is able to deliver the energy more efficiently and stores it for up to 10,000 cycles (compared to most batteries that last around 1000 cycles). It can charge cellphone batteries in 30 seconds and the technology could be applied to other storage units such as car batteries.
Her prize: $50,000 that she’ll be applying to her education this fall at Harvard. Leave it to a teen girl to figure out how to charge cell phones more efficiently.
Here she is describing her project:
I’m a guy and this articled could have done without this: “Leave it to a teen girl to figure out how to charge cell phones more efficiently.”
We should be encouraging young woman of the world to enter science and not make a potentially belittling comment about why she achieved her goal.