Good ideas can come at any age. Youth can be encouraged or discouraged from pursuing engineering based on early experiences. Taking their ideas seriously can make a difference for them and allow them to make a difference too.
The Lemelson-MIT program is making a difference to young innovators by funding their good ideas. This program supports “InvenTeams” as they take on applied problem-solving.
InvenTeams are teams of high school students, teachers, and mentors that receive grants up to $10,000 each to invent technological solutions to real-world problems. Each InvenTeam chooses its own problem to solve. One of the problems being addressed is energy generation.
Alternative, clean energy is one of the most active areas of engineering. Although various technologies exist or are being developed, wave power generation is gaining attention. That potential was not missed by Adam Haig, a student at Wallenpaupack Area High School in Hawley, PA.
As reported by Popular Mechanics, Haig is part of a one of 15 InvenTeams located across the country. These groups proposed inventions that caught the attention of the Lemelson-MIT InvenTeam initiative. The process included nearly a year of proposal work and being selected from hundreds of applicants.
The InvenTeam selection committee looks for schools who are dedicated and have an invention that could be feasible with a $10,000 budget. With their grant, Haig and the Wallenpaupack team aim to create a “lake wave generator” to capture energy to power dock lights throughout Lake Wallenpaupack.
“It was a group effort to come up with the idea,” Haig says. “The lake is right next to us—our school is right along the shore—so it made sense to come up with something to take advantage of that.”
The team’s teacher, Gene Schultz, believes there just aren’t enough programs like this to help promote STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education. A 2012 study by the Condition of College and Career Readiness discovered that more than half of all high schools students are not prepared for college-level math courses, and science fairs even worse.
Teams will have nine months to work on their inventions before presenting their work at MIT at EurekaFest, where students will tour campus labs and facilities and meet some the world’s leading scientists and inventors. Hopefully their initial inspiration will grow into a lifelong pursuit of engineering.
Image courtesy of Popular Mechanics