Courtesy of New York Times:
This year, more than 1,600 students nationwide entered the Siemens competition. After several rounds of judging, 20 finalists were chosen to present their projects at N.Y.U. and to vie for scholarships ranging from $10,000 to $100,000. Eleven of the finalists were girls. It was the first year that girls outnumbered boys in the final round. Most of the finalists attend public school.
However, one of the most popular was by three home-schooled girls from Pennsylvania and New Jersey — Caroline Lang, 16; Rebecca Ehrhardt, 15; and Naomi Collipp, 16 — who used a Power Point presentation to demonstrate their “Burgercam” monitoring system. It is designed to determine when E. coli bacteria in hamburgers have been safely eliminated by measuring the shrinkage of each patty when fully cooked.
Other cool projects included: creating a molecule that helps block the reproduction of drug-resistant tuberculosis bacteria, studying bone growth in zebra fish, whose tail fins grow in spurts, similar to the way children’s bones do, and identifying genetic defects that could play a role in the development of Lou Gehrig’s disease.
Link HERE to check out the full story! I'm very pleased to know that there is an inept interest in the safety of hamburger;however, it doesn't take a science project to know to use a meat thermometer and cook a burger to 160 degrees F to avoid E.coli. Link HERE to read one of my past entries on the topic.
| Permalink| 
