Strap on your safety goggles, folks, because Editor-in-Chief Aaron is here today to talk about science fairs!

Earlier this year, a Canadian eighth-grader made headlines when he created a working version of Archimedes’ famous solar death ray. Keep in mind that London, Ontario’s Brenden Sener isn’t your central-casting baking-soda-and-vinegar-volcano type of science fair kid—he won several awards for his project, including the Matthews Hall Annual Science Fair Gold Medal, the Physical Sciences Thames Valley Science and Engineering Fair Gold Medal, and the London Public Library Award for Inspiring Children’s Interests in Science and Technology.

Sener exists in rarified air: the world of top science fair winners. These are kids with graduate-level original projects with titles like “Biosynthetic Engineering of Novel Multifunctioning Electroactive Bacterial Cellulose-Carbon Nanotube Therapeutic Bandages for Rapid Clearance of Vancomycin-Intermediate Staphylococcus aureus.” The Society for Science awards $8 million in combined prizes at their International Science and Engineering Fair, and last year had entries from 49 U.S. states and 64 countries.¹ Google’s science fair ran until 2018 and awarded a $50,000 grand prize.

So, since it’s science fair season, let’s take a break from the solar system mobiles and potato alarm clocks and look at some cool, entertaining, and important science fair projects done by young people who are, let’s not mince words, way smarter than me.

In 2019, an Irish teenager invented a process for removing microplastics from water. Using a ferrofluid suspension of magnetite and oil and then yanking the whole mess out with a magnet, Fionn Ferreira was able to remove up to 85% of microplastic pollutants. Since it’s recently come to light that scientists can’t do a thorough study on the effect of microplastics on the human body because they literally cannot find a control group, it’s reasonable to expect that research like Ferreira’s will become increasingly important in coming years.

Inspired by, uh, certain then-current events, in 2016 a Massachusetts seventh-grader demonstrated that humidity, temperature, and wind conditions could indeed affect the pressure inside an inflated football, showing that a shift from room temperature to 41 degrees Fahrenheit reduced the ball’s pressure by 2 PSI. (Not to be outdone, that same year a Kentucky 10-year-old demonstrated that deflated balls do in fact travel farther.)
In 2011, seventh-grader Lauren Hodge won her age group’s top prize at Google’s fair for showing that marinating your chicken in acidic solutions can denature proteins and lessen the amount of carcinogens after it’s grilled. The cancer-causing amine called PhIP was reduced to 1.8% of its control amount when Hodges used a lemon juice marinade. Another project three years later at the California State Science Fair seemed to confirm those results, which could present a promising lead for future development of cancer inhibitors. (Also, acidic marinades taste good and you should use them.)
Eesha Khare took home a bunch of prizes in 2013 for her design of a nanotube-filled supercapacitor that could theoretically charge a smartphone in seconds. Although there were later some grumblings that the press exaggerated the claims made in Khare’s design, it’s worth noting that projects involving graphene supercapacitors have been collecting steam for years, and technology may have finally caught up enough to make them as cool as they sound.
And finally, a project that involves many of my favorite things: a 150-year-old mystery, old-timey war, and bacteria. As the story goes, during the Civil War’s Battle of Shiloh, a heavy thunderstorm followed the fighting, and soaked Union soldiers retreated to the banks of the Tennessee River, miserable and wet and wounded. The battle’s enormous casualty rate meant that doctors couldn’t attend quickly to the wounded, who laid in the cold mud for days. And there, some of them noticed that their wounds were glowing blue-green in the dark. Which, you know: freaky. They called it Angel’s Glow.
The thing is, as the days wore on, it became apparent that the soldiers afflicted with the eldritch glow fared better than ones without it; they not only healed faster, but were less likely to succumb to those secondary infections that carried off so many soldiers of the time. Medicine being limited in those days to “Maybe your blood is too hot, let’s saw your legs off about it,” doctors had no earthly idea what was going on, but thanks to a teenage Civil War nerd, we do.
In 2001, 17-year-old Bill Martin and his friend Jonathan Curtis demonstrated that a type of nematode-carried bacterium called Photorhabdus luminescens would have thrived in the cold, wet conditions that were present during the battle. In nature, P. luminescens is a powerful insecticide — in the current day, crop scientists use it to control pest insects like the potato beetle² — but it’s also really good at mopping up other pathogens.
That means that Shiloh soldiers, by virtue of bleeding out into the wormy muck, were really getting a dose of homegrown Tennessee antibiotics, a full decade before germ theory hit the medical mainstream — and 80 years before doctors started using penicillin to treat infection. And, as you’ve probably figured out by now, P. luminescens glows blue.
For solving this mystery, Martin and Curtis won first place at that year’s inaugural ISEF. See how far curiosity can take you?

And that’s all there is to know this week! — Editor-in-Chief Aaron

¹ One notable winner: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who in 2007 won second place for a project on antioxidant effects on nematodes.

² They do so with a cocktail of toxic proteins secreted by the bacteria, including one called “MCF” — which stands for, honest to God, “Makes Caterpillars Floppy.” Scientists are hilarious.