(Cross-posted on the Google Student blog and the Official Google blog)

Last week, 17-year-old Shree Bose from Fort Worth, Texas, the grand prize winner of the Google Science Fair, visited Washington, D.C. at the invitation of the White House. We invited Shree to write about her experience in the capitol. - Ed.

Adrenaline. I turned around as the brilliantly polished door behind me opened, and suddenly I was face to face with a man I’d seen so many times on television. The President of the United States calmly extended his hand to shake mine and those of Naomi and Lauren, the other two winners of Google’s first-ever Science Fair. He knew about our projects and was genuinely excited to talk with us.

The Oval Office is more than just a room. It has a palpable aura of grandeur, with the presidential seal in the center of the deep blue carpet and a portrait of George Washington hanging on the wall. The desk, where presidents of the past have contemplated some of the most important decisions in the world’s history, was polished to a gleam. President Obama leaned against it as he talked to us.

He asked us how we became interested in science, what our plans were for the future and which colleges we were interested in. Smiling, he told us to stick with science. We left the Oval Office feeling like our individual futures were important to the nation’s future; like we could change the world.

Our trip to Washington, D.C., also included visits to the National Institute of Health, the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Over our two days, we were given the opportunity to sit down and talk with many of our country’s leaders who have not only been extraordinarily successful in the fields we wish to go into in the future, but who also encouraged us to follow our own dreams. It was more than just meetings; it was inspiration.

Naomi Shah, Shree Bose and Lauren Hodge meet President Obama in the Oval Office

Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

Posted by Shree Bose, Google Science Fair winner

Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog


Yesterday, our top 15 Google Science Fair finalists descended on Google’s headquarters and wowed our luminary judges—as well as more than 1,000 local attendees plus Googlers who stopped by to check out the action. Our exhibit hall was buzzing with energy and excitement as everyone wondered which young scientists would go home with our top prizes.

The results are in—and this year was all about girl power. Our top three winners by age category are:

• Lauren Hodge in the 13-14 age group. Lauren studied the effect of different marinades on the level of potentially harmful carcinogens in grilled chicken.
  
  
• Naomi Shah in the 15-16 age group. Naomi endeavored to prove that making changes to indoor environments that improve indoor air quality can reduce people’s reliance on asthma medications.
  
  
• Shree Bose in the 17-18 age group. Shree discovered a way to improve ovarian cancer treatment for patients when they have built up a resistance to certain chemotherapy drugs.
  
  

Winners (from left to right): Lauren Hodge, Shree Bose, Naomi Shah We also awarded one Grand Prize and the Grand Prize Winner is...Shree Bose; congratulations!
Our judges said the unifying elements of all three young women were their intellectual curiosity, their tenaciousness and their ambition to use science to find solutions to big problems. They examined complex problems and found both simple solutions that can be implemented by the general public—like changing your cooking habits or removing toxins from your home—as well as more complex solutions that can be addressed in labs by doctors and researchers, such as Shree’s groundbreaking discovery, which could have wider implications for cancer research.
The winners took home prizes furnished by Google and our partners CERN, LEGO and National Geographic. Shree received a $50,000 scholarship, a trip to the Galápagos Islands with a National Geographic Explorer and aninternship at CERN. Naomi and Lauren each received $25,000 scholarships and internships at Google and LEGO. All three were awarded lifetime digital subscriptions to Scientific American. Beyond the grand prizes, everyone went home with some pretty cool loot, along with plenty of photos and memories that we hope will last a lifetime. If you’d like to watch last night’s events, including a speech from our chairman, Eric Schmidt, and presentations from judges Dean Kamen and Tierney Thys, you can find video on our YouTube channel.
On behalf of Google, our partners and science lovers everywhere, we’d like to thank all of our finalists and everyone who submitted a project to the inaugural Google Science Fair. We are humbled by your ingenuity, your dedication and your skill. We are heartened to know that our future is in the capable hands of our young scientists—young men and women who tackle big ideas to bring significant, actionable change to the world.
If you’d like information about next year’s Google Science Fair, let us know and we’ll be in touch soon, or keep an eye on the Google Science Fair site for regular updates.
Posted by Cristin Frodella, Google Education Team

Editors notes: We invited Katrina Guido, age 15, a freshman at Emmaus High School in Pennsylvania and one of our Google Science Fair semi finalists, to write a blog post about the encouragement she received from her biology teacher to enter the Google Science Fair and what she learned from this experience. Katrina is actively involved in many of the opportunities her school offers including Biology Olympics and Olympiad, her school newspaper, and the tennis team.


When my biology teacher, Mr. Keith Butler, presented my class with the opportunity to compete in the Google Science Fair, I thought it would be just another science competition. Traditionally, my school district requires honors students to complete an in-depth experiment, and then teachers are supposed to encourage students to participate in competitions which require a prepared presentation with overheads or an informal interview and trifold board.

I am thankful Mr. Butler encouraged all competitions using various methods of presentations and that he offered us this specific opportunity. Not every teacher would take the time to search out the numerous competitions that he had.

I was intrigued by the idea of using a new method of presentation for the Google Fair because well, lets face it, printing off overheads without smudging them requires a special gift. I loved the idea of using a website to present because the web is something with which I as a student am very familiar and can easily use.

As I researched further and further as to what the Google Science Fair was, it dawned on me. Here was an opportunity to share my data with scientists from all over the globe. The judges were people who had received a different and more in depth educations than I, but still shared my enthusiastic love of science. Just to have the ability to share my data with them was awe-inspiring.

Once I found out that my project had been chosen for the semi-final round, I was shocked. To be chosen as one of 60 out of over 7,500 was spectacular.

The smile on my teacher's face made the experience even better. Mr. Butler sent the link to vote for the People's Choice Award to just about everyone he knew and even a few people he didn't. The most prominent memory in my mind is of when he took the students (including me) to the state competition of the Junior Academy of Science. Wherever he went, whoever he met, he was proud to tell them to vote for his student who was a semi-finalist in the Google Science Fair. I heard feedback from so many people in my community who I had never known had such a prominent interest in science.

My experiment was purposely rather unorthodox. After having sat in a room for three hours listening to basically the same project testing vitamin C about six or so times, one starts to see all of the challenges that no one seems to know how to overcome, such as a lack of quantitative data. Basically, I wanted to fix previous errors but still keep the experiment rather simple, so I built a photospectrometer out of a card board box, an LED pen light, and a Lego robotics unit to measure the difference in color shade of a vitamin C color-indicator test.

I am always asked why I chose to use a Lego instead of an actual light meter and well, to put it plainly, that would have been boring, and not everyone has access to a traditional light meter. When formulating my method, I remembered the time my family went to Lego Land and programmed Lego robots to follow a black line and find and push foam balls into a bucket. The unit used to sense the black lines was obviously sensing a difference in light and this just so happened to apply to my experiment.

Mr. Butler is retiring this year and to be able to credit him with introducing me to this opportunity and with providing me with the knowledge, support, and independence needed to design my experiment is the best retirement gift I could hope to offer. Thanks to him my passion for science is stronger than ever. Thanks in part to him and also the other amazing projects which reached the semi-final round, I have already started thinking about my project for next year. I was inspired to begin searching for a laboratory with which I can work in order to conduct more in-depth research because I want to use science to improve the world.

Participating in the Google Science Fair has given me the ability to share my data and knowledge with the world and to view the ideas of other teenage science enthusiasts from different countries. Google has given me the opportunity of a lifetime and for that I am thankful.

Katrina Guido

Editor's note: We've invited guest blogger Christina Baker, former science teacher, visiting lecturer in Psychology at the University of Westminster in London and our Google Science Fair Judging Panel Coordinator to provide some general feedback about all the great science fair projects that were submitted.

The Google Science Fair judging panel is made up of an international team of scientific experts from a wide range of fields, from biology, physics and chemistry to computer science. We hope you enjoyed creating these projects as much as we enjoyed reviewing them!"

As this is the Google Science Fair’s first year, the judging team didn’t know what to expect. The judges were impressed with entrants’ ability to use both imagination and sound research methods to conduct their investigations, and also found their enthusiasm for their chosen topics very inspiring. There was also good evidence of effective teamwork, as Google Sites enabled entrants to work together without having to be in the same room... or even the same country!

The standard of entries was extremely high. One judge commented: “I've just judged a project that has absolutely blown me away... It was so good I had to take a break for a cup of tea before judging a few more!”

With over 7,500 entries from all over the world, it would be impossible for judges to provide individual feedback to entrants, but we have provided some key points that apply to all.

The best entrants...

• Explored original or imaginative ideas
• Communicated their thinking clearly and engagingly
• Were meticulous about their scientific method
• Followed the Science Fair rules
• Made sure that all teammates had parental permission
• Made sure that website and presentation permissions were viewable (i.e. not set to ‘Private’)
• Read and addressed all the criteria for each section
• Made sure there was a clear idea linking their project together (so that the experiment and conclusion clearly addressed the question and hypothesis)
• Explained how their work could make a positive difference to the world
• Allowed their love of science to shine through in their project

It was clear from the projects as a whole that the future world will be in good hands with the next generation of very talented young scientists!

Christina Baker
Google Science Fair Judging Panel Coordinator

(Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog and Google Student Blog)

From winged keels to water turbines, from prosthetic limbs to programming in pure English, it’s been a fascinating two weeks for our Google Science Fair judges. It was no easy task to select 15 finalists out of the 60 semi-finalists—all of the students’ projects asked interesting questions, many focused on real-world problems and some produced groundbreaking science that challenged current conventions.

After much deliberation we're happy to announce the 15 finalists:

Age 13 - 14
Anand Srinivasan, USA
Daniel Arnold, USA
Lauren Hodge, USA
Luke Taylor, South Africa
Michelle Guo, USA

Age 15 - 16
Dora Chen, USA
Gavin Ovsak, USA
Harine Ravichandran, India
Naomi Shah, USA
Skanda Koppula, USA

Age 17 - 18
Christopher Neilsen, Canada
Matthew Morris, USA
Shaun Lim Hsien Yang, Singapore
Shree Bose, USA
Vighnesh Leonardo Shiv, USA

In July, these finalists will come to Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. to present their projects to our panel of finalist judges, including science luminaries, technology innovators and one Nobel laureate. They'll compete for prizes that include $100,000 in scholarship funds, real-life experiences at CERN, Google, LEGO and Scientific American, and a trip to the Galapagos Islands courtesy of National Geographic Expeditions. The winners will be announced at our celebration gala that same evening, beginning at 6:00 p.m. PDT July 11. The event will be streamed live on our YouTube channel so make sure to tune in.

In addition, over the past two weeks people around the world have had the opportunity to vote for their favorite projects in our online voting gallery. We have had over 100,000 votes and the competition was really tight, but we’re happy to announce that Nimal Subramanian is the People’s Choice Award winner. Nimal will receive a $10,000 scholarship. Congratulations Nimal—the public really loved your project!

Congratulations to all the finalists and the People’s Choice Award winner. We look forward to meeting the finalists at Google in July.

Samantha Peter, Education Team

“Science is cool,” my 10-year-old daughter said to me this morning. I asked her why she thought that. “Do we need to have a reason?” she fired back with a smile. After I stopped laughing, I thought about what she said, and I realized something.

I’m not a scientist, but in my house, science is just part of everyday life. When the kids have questions, we talk about the science behind the things they’re wondering about. We often do fun things together that involve science—from activity kits to nature walks to visiting science museums. So it’s obvious to my two girls why science matters.

But most parents don’t happen to brush against the world of science everyday as the editor in chief of Scientific American, as I am—and most of them didn’t get science degrees either. Studies have shown that attitudes about science and scientists form at a young age. If kids get turned off to science at a young age, they may never come back. How can non-scientist parents easily foster a love of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM)? That’s where Bring Science Home comes in!

Every weekday for the month of May, Scientific American is posting a free science activity online for parents and their 6-to-12 year-olds to enjoy together. We worked with members of the National Science Teachers Association to create material based on the National Science Education Standards, so the weekly themes echo what kids learn in younger grades. The Bring Science Home activities are fun and easy, and you can do them in less than an hour—usually with things you already have around the house. With summer coming up, they’re also handy to entertain young minds over the long break.

This initiative is part of Bridge to Science, Nature Publishing Group's participation in the Change the Equation partnership and the White House's Educate to Innovate campaign. You can read more about that here.

So we say: Bring Science Home! Because science belongs in the home.

Posted by: Mariette DiChristina, Editor-in-Chief Scientific American

Congratulations to the global semi-finalists in the inaugural Google Science Fair! These 60 projects were selected from a pool of over 7500 entries from more than 90 countries around the world and are now available for public viewing at google.com/sciencefair.

The many thousands of innovative and engaging entries on a wide range on topics from cancer treatment to renewable oceanic energy to aeronautic auto-pilot algorithms made it no easy task to select just 60 semi-finalists. Our teams of teachers around the world has worked hard to evaluate the creativity, scientific merit and global relevance of each submission over the past few weeks and now the results are in!

The global semi-finalists in each of the three age categories are:

13-14
Kevala Van Volkenburg, Canada
Marc Ting, Canada
Ann Ding, Canada
Nishanth Kumar, Krishna Betai , Anish V Malladi, India
Sahil Sahibole, India
Muhammad Syafiq, Bin Idros, Lee Tae Won, Bey Huat Guang, Singapore
Girish Kumar, Singapore
Luke Taylor, South Africa
Rishabh Mazmudar, USA
Peter Graham, USA
Sunny Potharaju, Justin Yang, USA
Nimal Subramanian, USA
Lauren Hodge, USA
Michelle Guo, USA
Michael Yang, USA
Anika Raghuvanshi, USA
Daniel Arnold, USA
Harikrishnan Ravikumar, USA
Anand Srinivasan, USA
Muadh Ghuneim, USA

15-16
Rebecca Todesco, Canada
Chaithya G. R., Siri G.R., India
Harine Ravichandran, India
Shashank Dahagama, India
Georgia Bondy, UK
Nicholas McCoy, USA
Jacqueline Carbajal, USA
Dora Chen, USA
Gavin Ovsak, USA
Yanqi-Tyson Chen, USA
Amelia Ricketts, Willa Sieradsk, Jennifer Wang, USA
Jacob Buckman, USA
Natalie Ng, USA
Katrina Guido, USA
Alan Hwang, USA
Saumil Bandyopadhyay, USA
Margaret Rodeback, USA
Naomi Shah, USA
Bradley Proffit, USA
Skanda Koppula, USA

17-18
Christopher Nielsen, Canada
Niraja Ranadive, Pushpendra Yadav, Vaishnavi Kokitkar, India
Jun Bing, Alec Wang, New Zealand
Xu Shi Meng, Singapore
Chiu Chai Hao, Singapore
Tanmay Shankar, India
Shaun Lim Hsien Yang, Singapore
Shree Bose, USA
Arushi Raghuvanshi , USA
Munia Mustafa, USA
Addison Weiler, USA
Matthew Morris, USA
Nathan Sprenkle, USA
David Tang-Quan, USA
Nicholas Louis Montgomery, USA
Grace Kim, USA
Dan Dou, USA
Vighnesh Leonardo Shiv, USA
Ankush Gupta, USA
Joy Carol Ming, USA

Now that the first round is over it’s your turn to be the judge … starting today you can visit google.com/sciencefair and vote for your favorite Google Science Fair project. The team or individual with the most votes will win the People’s Choice Award and bring home a $10,000 scholarship. Public voting will only be open until 20 May 2011 so make sure to cast your vote today to ensure your favorite project is in the running.

Check back 23 May to see which teams will be flown out to Google’s headquarters in California for the final round of judging conducted by our panel of renowned scientists and innovators and the celebratory finalist event.

Thanks to all of the students around the world who submitted projects to the Google Science Fair and congratulations again to all the young scientists who made it to the semi-finalist round.

Posted by: The Google Science Fair Team

Missed registration this year? Click here to sign up for a notification when registration opens for the Google Science Fair 2012.

Editor’s note: Steve Wolf is a professional stunt coordinator in the movie and TV industry. He explains the importance of creative scientific inquiry and reveals some of the science behind movie magic.

Every morning I wake up and ask myself what I feel most inspired to do. I really enjoy inventing, innovating, and blowing things up... so I do! As president of Special FX International, I'm a scientist who works on movie sets, coordinating stunts and special effects for movies, television shows and live events. I’m often asked how I got into this work, but the truth is, I never got out of it. I started inventing when I was four, and experimenting with my chemistry set at six.

Science is the language and blueprint of how the universe

works. Just as you can make up new words after you know the letters of the alphabet, you can arrange simple principles to invent anything you like once you understand the basic building blocks of science.
My love of inventing has led me to amazing opportunities in the film industry, working with movie stars including Tom Cruise and famous directors including James Cameron. But while movies provide interesting technical challenges, science is what I find truly exciting.

The idea of making science as engaging, memorable and fun as an action-adventure movie inspired me to create “Science in the Movies,” a live presentation that reveals to students (and teachers) how their favorite movie stunts and effects are based on simple physics and chemistry. I am especially excited to show the global finalists (and everyone watching on YouTube) the science behind movie stunts in person at the Google Science Fair final event on July 11!

I’m thrilled and honored to help Google bring its online Science Fair to students around the world. Seeing the amazingly creative projects kids have submitted is extremely inspiring. It gives me hope that the next generation will be prepared to tackle whatever challenges may arise -- both on screen and off -- with a true scientist’s dedication to invention, ingenuity and discovery.

Posted by Steve Wolf, President, Special FX International

Editor's note: Our partners at Scientific American have prepared a special guest post to celebrate Earth Day and highlight the role of youth scientists in solving the environmental problems we face today.

The fuel of the future isn't gasoline, ethanol or even hydrogen -- it's education. Specifically, the science and engineering education that will enable a fresh group of smart young people to tackle the world's ongoing energy crisis. Solving the energy crisis will go a long toward solving a host of environmental problems: pollution, environmental health risks, climate change, to name just a few.

You interested?

Today marks the 41st anniversary of Earth Day, a day meant to celebrate a new way for people and the planet to thrive. And that always has and always will depend on youths (a demographic I am rapidly leaving behind).

That's why Scientific American partnered with the Google Science Fair and, on this earth day, it is why we are excited to announce that out of the 12 categories that student scientists could choose from, 'Earth & Environmental Sciences' ranked first. That surprises me, at least, given that Google is famous for its computer science and math prowess (which was a close runner-up category).

A quick YouTube search reveals Google Science Fair projects ranging from harnessing sewage to generate electricity to using recycled cans to create efficient solar ovens. Given that the world produces 300 billion such cans every year, that's at least one solution that might come in handy.

Out of some 7,500 entries from more than 10,000 young scientists from 90 countries around the world, handling the planet's environmental problems comprised close to 25 percent of submissions. And that's a good thing because young scientists are the key for revving up the innovation engine we need to invent our way out of these problems of our own making. Let's get started!

Posted by David Biello, associate editor for environment and energy at ScientificAmerican.com

Editors Note: Now that the submissions for the Google Science Fair are in and the judging has begun in earnest, we invited guest blogger Thomas Culhane, a National Geographic Emerging Explorer and one of our judges for the Google Science Fair, to talk about how he believes the world is your laboratory.

I am so excited to see all of the submissions that came in -- but I am most looking forward to reviewing them and seeing which of the world’s problems you chose to tackle!

As I prepare to leave Germany to do field work on renewable energy projects in Africa and Asia, I find myself reflecting on how an American kid like me became a National Geographic Emerging Explorer. I spend one half the year travelling around the world conducting “citizen science” with people from a vast range of cultures and backgrounds and the other half working on home-scale energy, water and waste research in Europe. And I ask myself: what advice can I give to other young people who want to do something positive to help both civilization and the natural world endure?

My principal piece of advice is, “science is all around you. Build on the science you learn in a classroom or from a textbook; the world is your laboratory!”

When I was in middle school and high school, the land around my home -- the Hudson Valley ecosystem -- taught me important lessons about human impact. The stream was littered with phosphates, oil and other pollutants from the town. The forest was full of plastic waste, leftover shopping carts and even old cars that were dumped by my own neighbors. I became an environmental activist on the first Earth Day in 1972, when I was 10. While adults in my neighborhood were planting flowers and sweeping streets, I gathered my friends to clean up the woods.

In my teenage years, I did everything I could to further my scientific education. I rode the train to the Museum of Natural History in New York City, I joined Pete Seeger’s Clearwater Club, I took summer jobs cleaning test tubes in laboratories and I went on field trips with professional scientists who taught kids how to research environmental degradation. By age 15, I was finally old enough to fulfill a lifelong dream -- I took a scuba diving course.

Seeing the underwater world changed my life. My subsequent dives were often in lakes and quarries, so I saw a lot of garbage down there. And a lot of oil slicks. I realized that there is no “out of sight out of mind”; the way we live has downstream consequences that you can’t just throw or flush away. Even in the most remote and beautiful places, there is no escaping the mess we make in our cities and towns.

After college, I spent time following orangutans through the rainforests of Borneo and learning from the local tribespeople who knew how to live sustainably. I returned to my high school as a teacher and made it my mission to share what I had learned with others and inspire students to look beyond the classroom. Taking my students on field trips into the incredible Hudson Valley ecosystem was what led me to continue my own education and pursue my Ph.D. in Urban Planning with a specialty in Environmental Analysis and Policy.

Seeing the multiple problems we face, I am most excited to work with you, the students participating in the Google Science Fair, because I know that your creative minds are going to solve the problems you’ve inherited from us on this precious planet. Science is all around you -- but the excitement to tackle scientific problems is within you. To be a great scientist, develop a passion for the possible and an interest in problem solving. Then go outside and explore, observe, hypothesize and experiment. Alongside your schoolwork, the world, its citizens and the laws of nature will then teach you everything you need to know.

At midnight last night we officially closed the submission window for the first Google Science Fair. We have been thrilled by the positive response from students around the world, and we are happy to announce that we received over 7,500 entries from more than 10,000 young scientists in over 90 countries around the world.

The judging has already begun and we are seeing some truly fantastic projects. Students are tackling interesting, important problems -- from treating cancer and preventing tsunamis to monitoring ocean erosion -- and presenting their findings in engaging and creative ways. The judges have a tough job ahead of them!

Keep an eye on google.com/sciencefair for the announcement of the 60 global semi-finalists on May 9 and get ready to vote for the People's Choice Award!

Samantha Peter, Education Marketing Manager

We have been overwhelmed by the number of submissions we received for the Google Science Fair. We are enthusiastic about the the great projects we have seen so far!

The competition was officially closing yesterday. However, we understand that, due to the volume of projects submitted on the last day, some students experienced problems when they tried to submit their projects close to the deadline last night. That’s why we have decided to re-open the submission form until 11:59:59 PM EST on Thursday, 7 April 2011 to give everyone who had a problem a chance to submit their work. We know that many of the students who were unable to submit their projects had worked very hard for several months to perfect their work and we believe that it’s only fair to give them a chance to compete. And, guess what - if you’ve already submitted your entry, you can use this time to continue to perfect it or tweak it!

Wishing everyone who submitted projects good luck! Remember to keep an eye on www.google.com/sciencefair for the announcement of our global semi finalists and the launch of our People’s Choice Awards in early May.

Samantha Peter, Education Marketing Manager

Editor’s Note: Amidst the flurry of activity around the final day of submissions for the Google Science Fair, we invited guest blogger Tierney Thys, a National Geographic Emerging Explorer and one of our finalist judges for the Google Science Fair, to talk about how she believes scientific thinking is a life skill.

When I’m not hammering away at my computer, chasing small children or catching up on sleep, I’m in the ocean searching for one of nature’s giants, the infamous ocean sunfish, Mola mola. This decidedly odd behemoth is the world’s largest jellyfish eater, produces an estimated 300 million eggs at a time and is the world’s largest bony fish.
I’ve always had a penchant for animals. My childhood home was filled with dogs, fish and the occasional bird but, aside from our dogs, I’ve always preferred being with animals in the wild. And the weirder the beast, the better. It’s a passion I’ve carried with me ever since I was a little girl.

Photograph by Mike Johnson

I think we are all born little scientists and as we get bigger some of us just become increasingly stubborn about answering the torrent of questions our brains ask every day. I think stubbornness or, shall we more diplomatically say perseverance, is a very handy trait and one that you should cultivate if you’re interested in pursuing a science career. It will see you through the tough times and deliver you into the rewarding territory of discovery. As you are finishing up your application (due today!) let this push you through to your conclusions.

Science is a life tool and scientific thinking is a life skill. If I had one morsel of advice to give you as you wrap up your application, I’d say, “Be a critical thinker with a healthy dose of skepticism. When someone delivers you information, ask yourself, “How did he/she get that information? Was that a legitimate experiment? What and where is their evidence? Is it robust? Is there an alternative explanation and has that been tested? Who is paying for the research and do they have an ulterior motive? Keep in mind that these are questions I will also ask myself as I review your application.
We’re living in a time of phenomenal, mind-blowing discoveries--from investigations that unveil the dynamics between our oceans, our actions and Earth’s climate, to enhancements in computer interfaces and technology, to explorations into the life of ocean giants, to a better understanding of the evolutionary processes that lead from single-celled blobs to keyboard-clicking bloggers.

What a spectacular time to be alive! We are truly rocketing ahead on the shoulders of giants. Yet simultaneously, we are being deluged by a relentless onslaught of junk science and crazy misinformation--all presented in a frighteningly authoritative manner. How many of us
have read recently about “scientific studies” claiming to help you loose 20 pounds in 2 days, or cure acne forever with just one pill?
Science is the ultimate tool against such bogus claims. Learning how to ask questions, how to read data, conduct data analyses and how to figure out what claims are supported or refuted by legitimate evidence are all critical life skills. My science training has given me this powerful way of knowing and served as my reliable guide through today’s gauntlet of quackery and false promise.

So now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go drink some orange juice. The carton scientifically claims it will take just two glasses per meal to reduce my cholesterol level! Hmm I wonder how the evidence is supported.

Watch this video to learn more and see Tierney swimming with the great Mola.

Posted by Tierney Thys, National Geographic Emerging Explorer

Editor’s note: We’ve invited guest blogger Rolf Heuer, Director General of CERN, the European Centre for Particle Physics - and one of the Google Science Fair finalist judges - to talk about how his passion for Science developed. To learn more about CERN’s big experiments check out our interview with physicist Tara Shears.


Google asked me to write a few lines about why I became a judge for the Google Science Fair, and they asked that I talk about what inspired me to go into science. When I was young I remember being passionate about two things. One was my local football team, VfB Stuttgart, and the other was a desire to know what things are made of at the smallest scales.

I’m not the first to ask that question, far from it. The idea of atomism – that there’s a smallest possible piece of any given substance – goes back to Leucippus and Democritus in ancient Greece. That people have been asking such questions for so long makes me think that this kind of curiosity is not just the preserve of scientists, but is part of what makes us all human.

My intuition is backed up by evidence: whenever we ask people what they think of us at CERN, they always say that while our science is sometimes hard to follow, our mission to understand the fundamental nature of the universe is an important one. People support curiosity-driven science.

When I was young, I never thought of myself as a junior scientist, I was just curious. The ‘research tools’ I chose to satisfy my curiosity were construction sets like LEGO. I would spend hours experimenting with them. Most of the time, I’d fail to produce what I was aiming for at the first attempt, but with perseverance I usually got there. Again, I have the impression that I was not alone. For others, chemistry sets or microscopes took the place of my construction sets, but it seems to me that most of the children I grew up with were behaving scientifically one way or another. I think that all children are natural scientists, but as we grow up, many of us seem to disengage. That’s one good reason why I’m judging the science fair: I think it’s a great way to promote and sustain interest in science at a crucial age.

The thing that inspires me about the Google Science Fair is that it’s all about encouraging young people around the world not to forget how to think and behave scientifically. It’s about science bringing people together, and it’s about encouraging young people to design a scientific procedure and follow it through from start to finish. As a judge, I’ll be looking out for projects that push the limits. If there are setbacks along the way, I might well consider that to be a plus, because just as I discovered with my construction sets as a child, it’s through such experience that we progress.

One of my greatest dreams is for science to play a much bigger role in society. Of course it already does in terms of the gadgets we use and the things we all take for granted, but I also want people to talk about science the way they talk about football. If I walk down the street and ask people what inspires them it would be great to get the answer ‘soccer teams and science fairs’ on equal footing. Science deserves to be up there at the top of the popular agenda. Am I dreaming? Maybe, but I think that initiatives like the Google Science Fair can do much to make this dream a reality.

Posted by Rolf Heuer, Director General of CERN

Did you know that Mitch Rensick won his local Science Fair? Today he is a professor at the MIT media lab where he develops educational technology that is changing the landscape of learning with his Lifelong Kindergarten project. You can learn more about him by tuning in to our interview.

Now is your chance to use your scientific knowledge to try to explore and solve real word problems as part of the Google Science Fair. With only 5 days left before the April 4th deadline, we encourage you to get your projects submitted.

Please keep in mind that when entering the contest, we’ll need parent or guardian consent in order for submissions to be valid. Submissions that don’t include parental or guardian consent will be disqualified. Even if you’re working as part of a team, we require parental or guardian consent for every team member. Your parent or guardian can consent by either:

1. Responding to the email they were sent when you signed up. If they didn’t receive the email, visit this link: https://services.google.com/fb/forms/gosfconsent/
2. If your parent or guardian doesn’t have access to email, we are also able to accept a hard-copy of the consent form which you can download here. Once your parent or guardian fills this out, scan and email the completed form to science-fair-consent@googlegroups.com

As you put the finishing touches on your projects, please remember to:

• Set the permission of your Google Science Fair project site to public so the judges will be able to see it.
• Include a video or presentation on your Summary Page (also set to public). For an example, check out Tesca’s sample project.
• Submit your final project site via this form by 4 April 2011.

If you have any questions make sure to check out our FAQ and help forum. Good luck to all the students who have entered the competition, and keep an eye on our Google Science Fair site for the announcement of the global semi finalists in early May. We look forward to seeing all the great work from the world’s future scientists.

Samantha Peter, Education Marketing Manager

Editor’s note: We’ve invited guest blogger Spencer Wells, National Geographic Explorer in Residence, Director, The Genographic Project and one of our finalist judges for the Google Science Fair to talk about how he believes young people can help us solve tomorrow’s problems

Spencer Wells explains Genographic Project to participants in northern Chad. Photo by David Evans

I visit a lot of schools every year to discuss my work as a geneticist and anthropologist with students. Some of the time is spent with me telling the kids about what I’m doing – about our species recent journey from an African homeland, and how we all carry the story inside ourselves, in our DNA. Probably the most interesting part of any visit, though, is when the students give feedback through their own stories, comments and questions. And one of the questions that nearly always comes up is ‘how did you become a scientist?’
Chance, good teachers, and role models all play big roles in determining a person’s career choice. For instance, my parents took me to see the King Tutankhamun exhibit that toured the United States in the late 1970s. This chance encounter with the amazing objects on display awakened a passion for ancient history that still drives me. Similarly, my mother returning to graduate school to pursue a PhD in biology when I was ten showed me that science could be fascinating. It wasn’t simply a dusty tome of facts to be memorized, but rather, a way of learning about the world – solving puzzles on a daily basis, with Mom as an active role model. And finally, my own teachers – special shout-out to Mr. Swift, my 9th grade biology teacher, and Mr. Aiken, my high school chemistry teacher! – showed me that science could be fun. Whether it was Mr. Swift passing around a boa constrictor in class or Mr. Aiken hammering a nail with a banana that had been soaked in liquid nitrogen, they showed me that science is really fun, in addition to being fascinating.

On expedition in Chad, Spencer Wells explains the Genographic Project to local village leaders and community members. Photo by David Evans

It’s this passion that I try to convey to the students I talk with – the idea that you need to find your passions and run with them. Even if it seems esoteric (are you obsessed with butterfly wing patterns, or really want to understand why the aurora borealis lights up the arctic skies?), find that something – or things – you care passionately about, and start digging. You never know where it will lead you, or the rest of the world. For instance, my passion for history and science in high school translated into a PhD in population genetics, and ultimately into my work on Genographic. Similarly, the intricate scales that make up the patterns on a butterfly wing may provide an important insight into the development of better photovoltaic cells, while the aurora borealis may provide clues that could be used to develop alternative sources of energy. The desire to explore has to come from within you, though – asking hard questions and not being content simply to wonder, but to discover.

As young people, you have the wonderful gift of limitless possibilities – you aren’t restricted by anything other than your capacity to dream and your willingness to work hard. Adults can be very set in their ways – old dogs, new tricks and all that – but kids can approach problems with a fresh perspective that might be critical to solving an old problem. Yes, you’ll need to learn some things along the way – Einstein had to do his geometry homework just like everyone else – but keep an eye on the longer-term goal of using this knowledge to solve a problem or answer a question that gets you really excited. You may be young, but you can still dare to change the world.

Spencer Wells, Ph.D., National Geographic Explorer in Residence.

Editor’s Note: Guest Blogger and Googler Alfred Biehler has participated in many science fairs as a student with projects that included building a cyclocomputer and speakers from household materials and getting printers to do new things. He is currently playing with sending his phone into space. Alfred was invited to interview Kevin Warwick, a professor of cybernetics, to discuss...

"Fancy a day out with a Cyborg?"

A Googler recently asked me the above question. She knew someone with a robot on his desk would not be able to resist such an offer. And what an incredible day it was!

Kevin Warwick is a professor in cybernetics at Reading University and an incredible scientist, who inspired me in a few hours to test the boundaries that we see every day, and find innovative new ways of solving problems. Let me give you a few examples: As many of us know, impulses run between our brains and muscles. Kevin decided to plug a few wires into his own nerves and play with the output: Controlling a robotic hand with his brain, eventually while being on the other side of the planet.

He did not stop at observing the nervous system signals... he decided to send it signals too. He connected a few sonar sensors mounted on a baseball cap, to his nervous system. With a bit of practice, he taught his brain to interpret the sonar senor output, effectively allowing him to see what a bat would see without relying on his eyes. (Yes - it’s me in the video, with the cap on... “seeing” with my eyes closed!) Can you imagine the possibilities of this for people who might have lost their eye sight, or a limb? Or fixing deep sea optical fibre connections, or operating in those difficult to reach places?

And if that was not enough... he decided to connect his nerves with that of his wife, to allow for direct communication. How’s that for marital commitment?! Interestingly, he said that science fiction books that he read as a kid fueled a lot of his interests and his inquisitive mind.

But he is taking robotics also to a new level. The garden variety robot on my desk is really just a electrically powered mechanical arm. More advanced robots are controlled by computers or even artificial intelligence that will learn what works, and do more of that, and less of what does not work. Kevin decided to build a brain, a biological brain (grown from rat embryo brain sells in a dish with lots of probes on the base), and connect this biological AI brain to a few motors and sonar sensors. The result is a robot, controlled by a lab brain, and he demonstrated that it’s possible for this brain to learn that walking into walls is not as rewarding as avoiding them.

And this highlights what makes us so special: The ability to learn. To try, to test, to experiment. To fail, to try again in another way, to learn, to grow and to discover.

After spending an afternoon with Kevin, I was inspired to go break out my Lego bricks and test the boundaries again. Go tackle that next challenge in your project with fresh eyes. Who knows? You might well be at the start of some life changing invention!

Talking Science for the Google Science Fair

"We need to teach our kids that it's not just the winner of the Super Bowl who deserves to be celebrated," said President Obama in his recent State of the Union address, "but the winner of the science fair."

The first Google Science Fair, now underway, will do just that. More important, simply doing a science fair project is a great way to explore questions about the world around us. Finding the answers on your own is called "inquiry-based learning." Many studies, starting in the late 1960s, have shown this hands-on approach is an excellent complement for standard classroom work. But it's also really fun.

In a science fair project, you ask your own questions, figure out a way to find the answers by designing your own experiment, get the facts from your results — and then you become the expert authority on what you found. You'll also get a better idea about what scientists really do. Believe me, it isn't sitting around memorizing boring terms and statistics (as important as they are).

How do you get started? In this video, I got some advice from the awesome nutrition scientist Marion Nestle, who, with me, is one of the judges for the Google Science Fair.



Dr. Nestle is the Paulette Goddard Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New York University. She teaches courses at the university and also writes books and articles, blogs pretty much every day, and tweets on Twitter. She has a Ph.D. in molecular biology, but she came to love studying nutrition because it is so relevant to people's lives.

She recommends you "follow your passion" — go where your curiosity leads and only take on things that you "really care about." Don't worry if someone else has studied some aspect of your topic area before. "Anything anybody is interested in probably hasn’t been studied to the extent that it should be," she says. And I love her story about how 13-year-olds working on a science-fair project found the same results — and a couple of years earlier — than scientists who used sophisticated brain scans. And I hope to see your entry in the Google Science Fair!

Mariette DiChristina, Editor in Chief, Scientific American

Editor’s Note: The first ever Google Science Fair launched in January and we are excited to hear the feedback from students, teachers and schools about their projects. Here we share the Google Science Fair story of Mr. Miller and his students at the Falcon International School in Costa Rica.

The Falcon International School is an independent international school located in Garabito County, Costa Rica. With students from countries around the world, the Falcon International School aims to “develop a global understanding of education and citizenship” in its students. As part of this goal, students maintain constant communication with one another via the internet, have regular real-time video conferences with students abroad and participate in international student competitions like the Google Science Fair.

Mr. Miller and his students at the Falcon International School are taking their Google Science Fair projects somewhere few science fair projects have been before: into the blue waters and clean surf breaks of Costa Rica’s pacific coast! As an avid surfer, Mr. Miller originally came to Costa Rica to study primates in the country’s diverse tropical rain forests during grad school. After falling in love with the country’s sunny climate, warm people and pristine surf breaks, he decided to stay to teach full time and combine his passions for science and surfing.

Mr. Miller’s students may come from different countries around the world, but they share his passion for scientific inquiry and his love of the ocean. Many of the experiments that his students are planning take advantage of their school’s proximity to the pristine waters of Costa Rica’s Pacific shore. One group of students are using GPS and accelerometer data from a surfboard mounted smartphone to track speed and acceleration during their surf sessions. Other students are experimenting with sea water desalinization in order to turn ocean water into drinkable fresh water.

Mr. Miller’s students hope that their experiments will not only deepen their own understanding of Costa Rica’s rich natural resources, but also inspire students around the world to care about issues like ocean preservation and procuring clean drinking water for in-need populations.

Because the Google Science Fair is online, these students in Costa Rica are able to enter the competition and compete with other students around the world. Mr. Miller’s students are excited about using the web-based tools, the prospect of incorporating video into their projects and the chance to compete internationally. As Mr. Miller explains, the idea that “a little school in Costa Rica gets to compete with schools from North America, Asia, Africa and all over the world is very exciting for my students”.

Mr. Miller’s students will join students from more than 150 countries around the world who have registered to compete in the Google Science Fair.

Do you have a Google Science Fair story that you would like to share with us? If so, please fill out this form and tell us your Google Science Fair story.

Posted by Alex Roux, Google Edu Marketing

Editor's note: We've invited guest blogger Christina Baker, former science teacher, visiting lecturer in Psychology at the University of Westminster in London and one of our preliminary judges of the Google Science Fair, to tell us what the judges are looking for in great science fair projects.

Being a scientist is a fantastic job! But as we tend become specialized in a single field, judging a science fair is a great way to keep abreast of the multitude of exciting developments across the scientific world as a whole.

We’re looking forward to seeing the ideas and projects from the best and brightest young scientists from around the world. So what will the judges be looking for among all the entries? Here are my top tips:

Help! Where do I start?

Start with the topic that most interests you or is most relevant to your life. If you’re excited about your idea, it will be much easier to enthuse the judges about your investigation. Read as much as you can about your chosen topic area. What research has already been carried out? What are the latest findings? What is yet to be investigated?

Bowl us over!

Each entry can only be submitted once, so while your overall submission is important, a good strategy is to try to stand out among the many other submissions in the first round. First round judging will only review your introductory film or presentation, and your summaries. So however impressive your supporting documentation is, it’s important to make your introduction and summaries really sing to grab the judges’ attention and get you to the next round. You need a strong idea, of course, but you also need to consider how to make it stand out among the other entries the judges will see.

Be clear

It’s important that your explanation is clear and doesn’t get lost in technical jargon. The best scientists are great communicators, and you need to make your explanation easy for anyone to understand – not just a judge!

Help is at hand

You need to keep adult help to a minimum – this is your entry, after all – but don’t be afraid to ask your teachers if you’re not sure about something or to help you stay safe. You won’t be penalized as long as you acknowledge the help you’ve had in the Works Cited section.

Passion makes perfect

You’re entering the science fair, so you’re obviously passionate about your scientific work. Let your enthusiasm shine through in what you write. Think of your entry as a thrilling story that you’re just bursting to share! The judges want to see that you’re excited about your discoveries and how they might be useful.

Never give up!

Don’t lose heart with your project, even when things don’t go as planned. You might have to modify it as you go along - that’s part of the process! Remember, results that fail to support a hypothesis can be just as relevant and interesting to the scientific community as those that do. Don’t despair; just explain what happened in your conclusion, and what this might mean. Have your findings opened up any potential new areas for future investigations?

Your science; everyone’s future

Some of the most inspiring ideas are ones that have the potential to bring about positive change to the world we live in. Whether your idea has a practical application or simply increases our knowledge about something, make sure your project is rooted in a sound scientific method. Remember that you are the scientists of the future and we want to be sure that our world will be in safe hands!

Christina Baker, Google Science Fair Preliminary Judge

Tesca Fitzgerald is an award winning young scientist who helped us create the sample project for the Google Science Fair.

I hope that you're having a great time either starting or considering a science fair project for the Google Science Fair. Personally, I love how a science fair project allows me to innovate and experiment in a topic of my choice. Instructors in school will define the kind of work that you must complete for the term, but when you participate in a science fair, you're in the driver's seat. You decide the topic; you discover through experimentation; and you dig through the data to understand the meaning of the experimental results. I have been involved in science competitions for the past five years, and I really love the opportunity they give me to explore and refine my interests.

Before competing in science fairs, I knew I wanted to study computer science. It was only after working through several science fair projects that I realized my enthusiasm for developing artificial intelligence software. My continual involvement with science competitions helped me to discover and hone my interests, as I explored many topics within computer science and artificial intelligence software development. Now I have a head start on college because I already know what I want to study, what universities match my interests, and what scholarships I should be seeking.

The fact that this science fair is based entirely online makes it much easier to complete a project. I've known potential science fair participants who really wanted to attend a fair, but due to either the timing the location, couldn't do so. I knew another participant who, due to the fact that he couldn’t make it to his preferred fair, had to compete in a fair half-way across the state. Google's online science fair opens the opportunity to people all over the world with Internet access. And even if you don’t have your own computer, you can work on your project at your local public library.

When developing the sample for the Google site, I developed an outline of the whole project, then worked on each of the smaller sections one by one. By breaking the project up into smaller parts, I found that I could make meaningful progress on it each day. The word count will force you to consolidate your thoughts into core ideas. I’d also graphs and visual aids to your Google Science Fair project to help explain your experiment.

What areas of science do you really enjoy? If you were to start a science project, what would it be? Would it be a chemistry project? Or maybe a biology project? Experimenting in a scientific field can be fun and really interesting. Working on the Google Science Fair project was a great experience for me, and I hope that you have an awesome time working on your science fair project and discovering your passions.

Tesca Fitzgerald

(Cross-posted on the Google Docs Blog, Google Student Blog and Google LatLong Blog)

Are you a student who loves science? Do you have a good idea for an experiment that you’d like to share with the world? In 1996, two young computer science students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, had a hypothesis that there was a better way to find information on the web. They did their research, tested their theories and built a search engine which (eventually) changed the way people found information online. Larry and Sergey were fortunate to be able to get their idea in front of lots of people. But how many ideas are lost because people don’t have the right forum for their talents to be discovered? We believe that science can change the world—and one way to encourage that is to celebrate and champion young scientific talent as we do athletes and pop idols.

To help make today’s young scientists the rock stars of tomorrow, in partnership with CERN, The LEGO Group, National Geographic and Scientific American, we’re introducing the first global online science competition: the Google Science Fair. It’s open to students around the world who are between the ages of 13-18. All you need is access to a computer, the Internet and a web browser.

You may have participated in local or regional science fairs where you had to be in the same physical space to compete with kids in your area. Now any student with an idea can participate from anywhere, and share their idea with the world. You build and submit your project—either by yourself or in a team of up to three—entirely online. Students in India (or Israel or Ireland) will be able to compete with students in Canada (or Cambodia or Costa Rica) for prizes including once-in-a-lifetime experiences (like a trip to the Galapagos Islands with a National Geographic Explorer), scholarships and real-life work opportunities (like a five-day trip to CERN in Switzerland). And if you’re entering a science fair locally, please feel free to post that project online with Google Science Fair, too!

To enter, register online and create your project as a Google Site. Registration is open through April 4, 2011. Please note: you must get parental or guardian consent in order to compete. You can check out the complete rules here. After April 4, we’ll begin judging and will announce our semi-finalists in early May.

The semi-finalist projects will be posted on our online gallery, where we’ll encourage the public to vote for a “people’s choice” winner. From our list of semi-finalists, we’ll select 15 finalists to bring their projects to Google headquarters on July 11 to compete in our final, live event, where world-renowned science judges will select a winner in each age category, as well as a grand-prize winner.

Here's an example of a great science fair project site to inspire you. We asked Tesca, a U.S. high school senior from Oregon, to create it for us based on an award-winning project she’s been working on for years. Tesca’s objective is to make hospitals more efficient using artificial intelligence—a world-changing goal, to be sure.

So if you think you're the next Albert Einstein, Marie Curie—or Larry Page or Sergey Brin—sign up today for the Google Science Fair. Prove once again how science can change the world!

Posted by Cristin Frodella and Samantha Peter, Education Product Marketing Managers