Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Amazing Ride Home from Christmas!

(Drove home from Door County today. Surfing the dial, a couple of great items came over the various channels.)
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NPR Report:
A 17 year old student, Ms. Bechtel of Pennsylvania, has invented a device for detecting IED's using sound. How?
She explained in the interview, paraphrased here.

When I was in 8th grade, I was practicing my piano in my room. I am a musician.  I noticed the frequencies from the keyboard caused the metal on my banjo hanging on the wall to vibrate.  I thought, 'maybe I could use that principle to creat an IED detector using sound.

She used metal tins and authentic IED casings to test it in her backyard.  It worked great, other than a few false positives from bottle caps, etc.

She has been sharing her invention in various science fairs and competitions.

I have learned more science from science fairs than I ever learned in school.

Career aspirations?  I think she called it a "Molecular Particologist"?, and to work for a company in Sweden.

Wow!
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"WGLB - radio station featuring music from the 60's and 70's.  Check us out on Facebook!" 
The irony of an classic rock station on Facebook just hit me.

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