Remember that list teachers had you make in elementary school? It was filled with all of the amazing things you wanted to accomplish in your life, most of which were grandiose. And while most of us probably won’t have the opportunity to cure cancer or travel to the moon, some teenagers are already making an impact. All under 20, these kids are using their ingenuity and everyday objects to solve the world’s problems.
Eesha Khare
Just 18 years old, Khare knows more about batteries than most of us combined ever will. This Saratoga, Calif. teenager revolutionized their function by inventing one that can be charged in 20 seconds and keeps power 10 times longer than the average battery. [ph]
Param Jaggi
With carbon dioxide emissions (particularly from cars) becoming a more prevalent environmental hazard, Jaggi decided to look to the environment for a solution. The answer? Algae. Using the water weed, the 17-year-old Jaggi created Algae Mobile – a device inserted into the tailpipe of a car, which converts exhaust into oxygen. [ph]
Marion Betchel
The daughter of geologists and a music lover herself, Betchel found a way to combine her experience with both to fight violence. Using the sound waves from the piano, Betchel created a keyboard-based device that can detect hidden land mines — which, in many areas, are still a huge cause of death, particularly among children. Betchel’s device could prevent many of those unnecessary deaths. [ph]
Ryan Patterson
In Colorado, 17-year-old Patterson just found a way to ease the lives of the deaf using a glove. Equipped with sensors, a radio frequency transmitter and a microcontroller, this glove can interpret hand motions, thereby, translating sign language for the user. [ph]
Raquel Redshirt
In New Mexico’s Navajo Nation, poverty runs rampant while electricity is scarce. Many of the residents can’t afford an electric oven — making food options very limited. That is, until 16-year old Redshirt created a solar-powered one. Comprised of anything lying around — old tires, aluminum foil, shredded paper, dirt — Redshirt created a simple device that’s changing the lives of her family and community. [ph]
Considering all of these great things were accomplished during their teen years, just imagine what these youth are going to do in the next 50 years.
To read about more teenage inventors, click here.
MORE: Can Nail Polish Prevent Date Rape?
Tag: Inventors
The Innovative Combat Medic That Has Developed a Life-Saving Device for the Battlefield
For more than two decades, John Steinbaugh served as a Special Forces medic in the Army, and now he’s reinvented himself as an inventor.
Steinbaugh is the man behind the company RevMedx, which is developing new technologies to keep soldiers wounded at war alive. Back in February, NationSwell reported that the company’s first invention, XStat, was awaiting FDA approval, a hurdle it cleared in April. Now, RevMedx is gearing up to supply XStat to the military, plus developing additional technologies.
Steinbaugh’s innovation grew out of his observation that people have been using gauze to staunch bleeding for centuries, but the material doesn’t work well for wounds on certain parts of the body, such as the armpit and pelvis.
Steinbaugh tells Cat Wise of the PBS NewsHour, “Back in 2006-2007, at the height of the war, medics were getting fed up with the standard gauze. And we started seeing wounds that were much worse than what we were seeing at the beginning of the war. Medics were having more difficulties stopping the bleeding. And the way the medics described the device they wanted was fix-a-flat. So if you think of your tire, you inject the fix-a-flat into your tire, it finds the escaping air, it plugs it, and done.”
Steinbaugh couldn’t provide Army medics with fix-a-flat for people, but the product inspired his idea for a syringe loaded with tiny, compressed sponges that instantly expand when inserted into a wound, thereby stopping the bleeding. When Steinbaugh retired from the military he started RevMedx in Portland, Ore., and a $5 million grant from the Army sustained the company during the three years needed to develop XStat.
The sponges in an XStat are coated with blood-clotting medicine and expand 15 times their original size — applying pressure to the wound and stopping arterial bleeding within 20 seconds, according to testing the company has done. Additionally, each sponge includes markers detectable by X-ray so that surgeons can easily locate and remove them.
The company has starting shipping XStat to the military and is already modifying the idea for civilian applications, as well as developing a gauze with XStat sponges inside: XGauze.
Steinbaugh says, “Ever since the first day we started working on this, there’s been an immediate interest for other types of products, smaller shrapnel wounds, or small-caliber pistol wounds, and even in the civilian community, like law enforcement, or prison knife wounds and stabbings.”
MORE: Two Keys to the Future: 3-D Printing and Employed Veterans
[ph]
Can Nail Polish Prevent Date Rape?
As young adults across the country head to college this month, they might be worried about more than just getting to class on time. That’s because the Washington Post analyzed the most recent federal campus crime data available and found over 3,900 reports of sexual assaults on American college campuses in 2012. These statistics, coupled with the probability that such crimes are massively underreported, are disturbing, to say the least.
But four North Carolina State University students are developing an innovative product that might bring some peace of mind: a nail polish that changes color when it detects the presence of the date rape drugs, such as Xanax, Rohypnol or GHB in a drink.
How does it work? If the wearer uses her (or his) finger to stir their drink, the polish will change color if any of these drugs are present.
The team of invetors, which consists of Tyler Confrey-Maloney, Stephen Gray, Ankesh Madan and Tasso Von Windheim, are currently raising funds for research and development of the nail polish. According to Lauren K. Ohnesorge of the Triangle Business Journal, a securities filing indicates that they’ve already raised $100,000 from one investor, with the goal of ultimately collecting $250,000.
Back in April, these students won the Lulu eGames, which is sponsored by NC State’s Entrepreneurship Initiative, with their invention. Next they applied to present their startup idea at this fall’s Kairos Global Summit, and earlier this month, made it to the semi-finals.
The young entrepreneurs are keeping mum about when their product will be available, but the idea has already generated widespread interest.
Other products already exist for detecting date rape drugs, including Drink Safe’s testing coasters, and the pd.id, a battery-powered gadget that indicates the presence of drugs when immersed in a beverage, but none of them have the ease of use as nail polish. After all, if it works, Undercover Colors has the advantage of offering users one less thing to carry. Plus, since the polish is invisible, it will likely deter would-be attackers from even trying to spike someone’s drinks since they wouldn’t know who might be wearing it.
As the inventors behind Undercover Colors write on their Facebook page, “In the U.S., 18% of women will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime. We may not know who they are, but these women are not faceless. They are our daughters, they are our girlfriends, and they are our friends. While date rape drugs are often used to facilitate sexual assault, very little science exists for their detection. Our goal is to invent technologies that empower women to protect themselves from this heinous and quietly pervasive crime.”
MORE: The Innovative Blood-Drawing Technique That’s Pain-Free and Saves Money
The Innovative Blood-Drawing Technique That’s Pain-Free and Saves Money
Most 19 year olds spend their days hanging out with friends, not revolutionizing American healthcare. But that’s not the case with Elizabeth Holmes who dropped out of Stanford to start the company, Theranos.
During her freshman year in college, Holmes took chemical engineering professor Channing Robertson’s seminar on advanced drug-delivery devices (aka, things like patches and pills). After completing a summer internship at the Genome Institute in Singapore, she hit upon her first idea: a patch that simultaneously delivered medication and collected data about the patient to inform their doctors with.
Holmes dropped out of school to work on a patent for that product and to launch her company using the rest of her college savings.
That invention was the first of many that the now 30-year-old CEO would develop. According to Fortune, Holmes is listed as a co-inventor on 82 U.S. and 189 foreign patent applications. Eighteen in the U.S. have been granted.
When Holmes first told Robertson about her plan to drop out, Robertson told Fortune, “I said, ‘Why do you want to do this?’ And she said, ‘Because systems like this could completely revolutionize how effective health care is delivered. And this is what I want to do. I don’t want to make an incremental change in some technology in my life. I want to create a whole new technology, and one that is aimed at helping humanity at all levels regardless of geography or ethnicity or age or gender.'”
As Holmes set to work on her company, she shifted from her initial idea to one about developing a revolutionary way to run diagnostic tests on very small amounts of blood — just a drop — instead of the full vials most labs need.
She came up with a technique that not only minimizes the discomfort, but also enables doctors to run dozens of tests on just one sample — and it delivers the results efficiently and inexpensively. They’re so affordable, in fact, that no test costs more than half of the allowed Medicare reimbursement for it. Fortune writer Roger Parloff says, “with widespread adoption [this] could save the nation billions.”
And that’s just part of Holmes’s next plan for Theranos. The company is partnering with Walgreens, whose stores currently host 21 patented Theranos blood-drawing facilities. They’re all in Phoenix and Palo Alto for now, but the drug-store chain plans to gradually add them nationwide. Holmes’s eventual goal? For just about every American to have a Theranos facility within five miles.
In addition to the cost savings and the minimized discomfort, Holmes’ technique allows for more frequent blood draws in people with conditions that require it, so that doctors can better monitor the fluctuations in their health.
Holmes said, “Anywhere from 40 percent to 60 percent of people, when they’re given a requisition by a doctor to go get tested, don’t, because they’re scared of needles or the locations are inconvenient or the cost is too high. And if you’re not even getting tested, how is it possible that we’re going to move toward an era of preventive medicine?”
MORE: This California City is Staffing A Firehouse with A Different Kind of Lifesaver
After Hearing About Hot Car Deaths, This Young Inventor Created a Device to Prevent It From Happening Again
Every summer, we read the devastating headlines about children who have died from heat exposure after being forgotten or left in cars.
A year ago, when Nashville middle-schooler Andrew Pelham was only 11 years old, he heard about a woman who accidentally left 10-month-old baby in her van. “The child died,” he recalled.
“When I did some research, I learned that a child can be killed in less than 15 minutes in a hot car,” he told UpTV. “Pediatrics reported that 38 children are killed this way every year. I also remembered a local family who lost their baby who was asleep in the back seat last year. I couldn’t get that story out of my mind.”
Andrew, who has always loved inventing and creating things with his own hands, decided to take action in order to prevent other parents from ever making this horrible mistake.
MORE: When This Grandpa Had Trouble Holding a Glass, His Granddaughter Put on Her Inventor’s Cap
With some rubber bands and duct tape, the young inventor came up with the EZ Baby Saver. This bungee-like contraption hooks onto the driver’s door and the seat back, locking the driver in the car unless the device is unhooked. The idea is that it forces parents to check the backseat for their child before walking away from their vehicle.
No one thinks they’ll ever forget a child in the car, but as New York Magazine points out, our memories aren’t always so reliable: “The device does tap into some behavioral truths, because experts who study these tragedies say you can’t simply will yourself into remembering something.” In that sense, having a bright colorful cord that prevents you from leaving your car is like tying a string on your finger — it acts as a reminder.
The EZ Baby Saver, which won second place in the The Rubber Band Contest for Young Inventors, is easy enough for you to make yourself (Andrew put the simple instructions on his website).
As Andrew, who is now 12, told UpTV, “If I could prevent just one tragedy, then my invention would be a success.”
[ph]
DON’T MISS: These Middle School Girls Saw a Classmate in Need, So They Designed an App for Their Blind Friend
An Inventor to Help Other Inventors
If you’ve ever been struck with a million-dollar idea, you’re probably not alone. Most of us have likely had that burst of thought—but pushed it aside given the difficulty of transforming an idea into an actual product or service. After all, where would you begin?
Enter Inventalator, a new online web platform dedicated to helping inventors turn their ideas into physical products. The Milwaukee-based company was developed by Cody Skonard, a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. Skonard started the company with the intention to combine all phases of the invention process into one website, as well as enable inventors to form connections and receive feedback from the consumers to improve their idea.
The process is simple: Inventors first submit their ideas onto the website. From there, site users vote on the inventions based on whether they would buy the product or not. If a product receives 50 votes within a month, it is moved to the Inventalator “engine.” In this area, the site users and inventors are able to interact with one another. Users also offer suggestions and improvements on the product so it can be more appealing to the general public. Finally, when the product is ready to be developed, Inventalator connects the inventor with manufacturers, product licensors and distributors, getting them contracts as well.
Inventalator is not the only site for inventors but it has two distinguishing characteristics. First, it’s a “market intelligence platform,” meaning that instead of producing the product itself, it supplies inventors with all of the resources to develop the product. It is a one-stop site for the inventor’s needs. Second, the inventor keeps the property rights.
Although the inventor keeps the property rights, the service is not free. There’s a $10 initial fee to submit an idea as well as a 1-2% fee for site transactions and a 3-5% commission fee for crowdfunding campaigns.
In addition, Skonard is currently working on developing a production software tool. The program would work like a fake stock market where site users can invest fake money in answers to inventors’ questions. Like the stock market, the user can cash out when it wants and earn rewards for the site.
So far, Inventalator has been active for three months and has amassed 275 users. By connecting inventors with consumers, Inventalator has streamlined the process and made the inventions more accessible to both parties. With little to lose, it might be time to submit that idea—after all, it could be the next great American invention.
MORE: Want A Stake in Your Neighborhood’s Next Development?
These High Schoolers Solved a Foodie Problem With a 3-D Printer
If you’ve ever had the unpleasant experience of squeezing out watery ketchup all over your hotdog, two high school students in Liberty, Missouri, have come up with just the invention you need.
Condiment experts Tyler Richards and Jonathan Thompson, both seniors studying in the Project Lead the Way Program (PLTW) at North Liberty High School, were challenged by their teacher, Brett Kisker, to come up with a solution to a problem that was relevant to them. “We always start with the phrase, ‘it really bugs me when,'” Kisker told Lindsey Foat of the Hale Center for Journalism at KCPT. (PLTW is a nonprofit that provides instruction and training in science and technology to students from kindergarten to high school, in the form of after-school programs and in-class lessons for teachers.)
What could be more relevant to a teenager than the perfect ketchup experience?
Kisker challenged their idea initially. “I said that they could just shake the bottle and that there is a free solution,” Kisker told Foat. “But they did a lot of research and they had me convinced that this problem really does exist.” The two teens found that many people would be willing to pay a little extra to have the watery ketchup problem solved. Additionally, a ketchup dispenser that doesn’t need to be shaken could help seniors and people with disabilities alike.
The students began their project by researching what patents had already been issued for ketchup inventions. “There are a surprising amount of ketchup-related patents out there,” Richards told Foat. “There was one — it’s kind of hard to explain — but basically it’s a way to inject ketchup into a french fry. It was a bit extreme.”
Next the students brainstormed, coming up with 60 possible solutions. The one they settled on is shaped like a mushroom and inserted into the underside of the ketchup cap. “It is based on the Pythagorean cup idea,” Thompson told Foat. “It’s also the same principle that toilets work off of.” They built their prototype using a 3-D printer and showed it at an exhibition of PLTW experiments in Kansas City.
The two don’t have any immediate plans to turn their ketchup idea into a business, however. Thompson has enlisted in the Army, and Richards will start at the Missouri University of Science and Technology in August. But whatever they do, their time spent as inventors probably means that they’ll never look at a bottle of ketchup the same way again.
MORE: Two Keys to the Future: 3-D Printing and Employed Veterans
Forget About Mousetraps. Can We Build a Better Toilet?
Some everyday objects are so basic that you might think they couldn’t be improved upon. Like, for example, the humble toilet.
But The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is betting that scientists can build a better toilet. In 2012, the foundation chose 16 teams to participate in its “Reinventing the Toilet Challenge,” gave them $777,000 in grant money, and sent them off to reinvent the toilet.
One of the hopefuls is a group from the University of Colorado (CU), led by environmental engineering professor Karl Linden. Their innovation? A solar-powered potty. Now, their toilet is ready for its world debut: the team shipped a functional prototype to New Delhi, India, where it will appear in the second annual Reinvent the Toilet Fair on March 22.
Linden told Elizabeth Hernandez of the Boulder Daily Camera that his team’s toilet uses solar energy to convert solid waste into “a sanitary, harmless charcoal-like material that can be used for heating or fertilizing.” Meanwhile, a “urine diverting” feature heats the feces to a temperature of 70 degrees Celsius, killing any potential pathogens and making the resulting fertilizer safe for use. “Obviously, people at fairgrounds don’t want real feces present, so we’re going to make synthetic waste products,” Linden told Hernandez.
If the CU team’s work is judged a success at the fair, they will gain additional funding that will allow them to improve the cost-effectiveness of their design and cope with the problem of generating solar power on cloudy days. “It’s a pretty incredible experience to be able to actually build something that’s physically real because a lot of the work we do in the lab is studying concepts and theories and advancing science that way,” Linden said. And if the team’s toilet lives up to its promise, it’s definitely an innovation that shouldn’t be flushed down the drain.
MORE:How San Francisco Got Its Residents to Care About Sewers