At this year’s Google Science Fair, an online science competition for students ages 13-18 from around the world, one of the top prize winners was directly related to a topic near and dear to our hearts: water filtration.
The team of Julia Bray, Luke Clay and Ashton Coffer, all 14 year olds from Columbus, Ohio, took home the Scientific American Innovator Award for their idea to turn a challenging trash item, Styrofoam, into a means of filtering impurities from water.
Using Ingenuity to Solve a Difficult Problem
In the U.S. alone, 1.9 billion pounds of Styrofoam (the brand name of expanded polystyrene) are thrown away each year. Polystyrene waste takes up a quarter of U.S. landfill space and can take hundreds of years to degrade.
Using their scientific minds, these innovative youngsters found that expanded polystyrene consists of over 90% carbon. Since carbon is used in water filters, they wondered if it would be possible (and cost-effective) to produce a carbon filter from polystyrene waste. After hours of work and experimentation, they found out it was!
This is an idea that could reduce a significant amount of waste in our landfills, and help provide people with affordable access to clean water. As winners of Scientific American Innovator Award, Julia, Luke and Ashton received a $15,000 prize.
Learn more about their Styro-Filter project here. Also check out this Google Science Fair video summarizing their awesome innovation…
