- cross-posted to:
- tech@lemmit.online
- cross-posted to:
- tech@lemmit.online
Heman Bekele was inspired by Ethiopian workers laboring under the sun, and wanted to help ‘as many people as possible’
A middle-school teen has been named “America’s top young scientist” after developing a bar of soap that could be useful in the treatment of melanoma, a skin cancer that is diagnosed in about 100,000 people in the US each year and kills approximately 8,000.
Whenever you read “X-year old does something”, it’s usually already been done or a slight modification of something already been done.
Don’t underestimate our ability to miss the obvious. You’re talking about the race that over 3000 or so years, forgot scurvy was cured by vitamin C over 10 times.
They also used to shape steel wire by pulling it really hard through a kinda steel funnel. This works because the tensile strength of steel is much higher than its yield strength, so you can pull on it with more force than it takes to shape it, without it snapping.
Back in the day, we figured out corrosion helped make the steel slippery when it went through the shaping tool. We though it was because some dudes pissed on the steel, so for a while after people pissed on their steel. Until people started figuring out beer worked just as well, and then half beer half water.
Until they finally realized water worked just as well to create corrosion. It took a couple hundred years.
Sometimes it just takes someone to think about it and do it. At 14 that’s incredible, kids aren’t that selfless at that age.
It’s incredible to have the opportunity to mentor with a senior research analyst at 3M.
Wish more kids were given this kind of opportunity without going six figures into debt
I think both of your statements are correct - lots of innovations are right in front of us, are simple, and that’s the kinda shit scientists love. More kids, but really people of any age, should be given opportunities like this given passion or even a passing curiosity.
Whenever you read “person does something”, it’s usually already been done or a slight modification of something already been done.
On the shoulders of giants is a thing for a reason.
Even if the active ingredients are already known, developing a new mode of application for an existing drug is an enormous accomplishment for a student his age. Plus, the alternative (minors doing experiments with unapproved drugs) is likely illegal, so there’s only so much they could do.
When I was 14, I was not helping to cure cancer. My science fair project was about salt raising the boiling point of water. :) I’ll give him props but you’re right.
Were your tests conclusive?
I did mine on whether brown eggs would boil faster than white.
I did conclude the boiling point was raised. I was up for a Nobel prize in chemistry but was excluded because of my political leanings.
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Whenever anyone does anything, that’s usually the case…
remember when two highschool students solved a 4000 year old unsolved mathematical proof https://www.wfla.com/news/education/teens-prove-2000-year-old-pythagorean-theorem-school-officials-say/#:~:text=School officials say 17-year,and without using circular logic.
Must be fun to be so cynical all the time. Otherwise idk why you would do it? Like yeah fuck them kids. Better to not encourage them at all and say “you stupid idiot someone basically already did this what you’re doing is pointless, dumbass”