$250,000 for a High School Science Student

The story of three impressive high school science projects. Can you guess which student won $250,000 in the #RegeneronSTS? Applications open June 1: http://bit.ly/2HkLXT1 This video was sponsored by Regeneron. The Science Talent Search was founded and produced by the Society for Science and the Public.

Huge thanks to the students: Ronak Roy, Ana Humphrey, and Anjali Chadha. It was great getting to meet all of you and learn about your original scientific research.

Special thanks to Assistant Professor Konstantin Batygin for discussing Ana’s research and Planet 9 with me. More is coming on the Planet 9 front.

Ronak came up with a new design for the phoropter, the device used to determine eye-glass prescriptions. It’s basically been unchanged for 200 years. Using a liquid lens, he miniaturized the device and wrote an algorithm to determine your prescription.

Ana used math and physics to search for hidden exoplanets. There are a number of reasons why the transit method and Kepler telescope may have missed them: they’re too small, too inclined, or take too long to orbit and so were not seen. By considering which planetary systems have additional space for more planets, Ana came up with 560 locations where we may look again for planets in future.

Anjali developed an internet enabled device for measuring arsenic concentrations in drinking water. The device performs several chemical reactions to release the arsenic into a measurable state. It then reacts the arsenic with a test strip to produce a color output. This color is sampled by a camera and processed to determine the concentration of arsenic in the water sample. This has significant potential applications around the world helping reduce exposure to arsenic and potentially other contaminants.

Filming by Raquel Nuno