by
Mark Ollig
Students
of all ages, along with their inventions and experiments, attended the fifth
annual White House Science Fair last Monday, hosted by President Obama.
Students
presented their science projects, while the president would comment, ask
questions, and take pictures with them.
This
year’s theme focused on STEM (Science Technology Engineering Math).
Demonstrating
their science projects before the president, students explained why they
created their project, how it worked, showed the results obtained from their
experiments, and described its benefits.
I
felt, the highlight of this year’s science fair was the automatic book
page-turning mechanical device, created using Lego plastic blocks, by five
6-year-old kindergarten and first grade girl students.
Their
science fair project sat on a green cloth covered table.
A
colorful, informative poster was positioned behind it.
President
Obama approached the student’s display, smiled, and greeted them with; “Hey
guys! Hello! What’s your names?”
The
five students were: Emily Bergenroth, Alicia Cutter, Karissa Cheng, Addy Oneal,
and Emery Dodson, all from Tulsa, OK.
He
shook each girl’s hand, as they introduced themselves.
“Tell
me about your experiment, tell me about your project,” stated the president.
The
young student inventors were each wearing a uniformed blue shirt and a red cape
with an “S” logo on it.
“We’re
the Supergirls from Girl Scout Troop 411,” replied one of the students.
The
president grinned and quipped, “Which is why you guys are wearing capes.”
One
student began explaining their project, “We looked at different books that are
used in education and learning.”
Another
student told the president, books are a great learning tool, but some people
are unable to turn the pages in a book, due to medical conditions, such as
being paralyzed, arthritis, or that “their arms might not work.”
“So,
we invented a device that can help people turn pages in a book,” one of the
students said.
The
students then turned toward the table where their page-turning device sat, and
began to explain how it worked, while the president carefully watched and
listened.
Then,
they turned on the battery-powered device.
A
low buzzing sound was heard as it began operating.
The
plastic flywheel began to slowly spin over the page of the opened book placed
beneath it, and would “catch” a single book page, using one of four, small,
Lego rubber tires attached to each of four individual arms extending from the
center hub of the motorized flywheel.
The
book page would flip-up to this flywheel, because of the friction caused by a
separate Lego plastic arm positioned near the edge of the pages of the book
acting as a pendulum.
This
plastic pendulum arm would flip up the next page, in order for the flywheel’s
rubber tire to catch, and then turn the page over.
The
turned page would then neatly lay flat against the previously turned pages.
This
demonstration caught the president’s eye.
He
leaned down, placing his right hand on the table, while closely looking at the
plastic, gear-driven motorized device, as it automatically turned the pages in
the book.
One
page would be turned about every two seconds.
“Well
. . . this is wonderful!” the president exclaimed. “How did you guys figure
this out?”
“We
had a brainstorming session,” one of the young students replied.
The
president then asked how long it took them to build the page-turning device.
“Three
months,” they answered.
As
the page-turning device continued to quickly flip through the pages of the
book, the president watched and commented, “It’s working really well, although
you’ve got to read kind of fast.”
The
president then asked if they were able to slow it down, and speed it up; the
students replied in unison: “No . . . ”
One
of the students quickly added, “It’s a prototype.”
The
president laughed, and looked around the room towards the sound crew,
photographers, reporters, and others, and quipped, “It’s a prototype! . . .
it’s a prototype . . . it will get refined later!”
All
the people in the room shared in the laughter and smiled.
He
then turned back to the students, who were resetting the book page-turning
device, and said, “So, do you guys like inventing things, and building things
like this?”
They
nodded, and all responded with, “yes.”
“You
guys are very good at this. I’m so impressed,” the president said to them.
The
president then took pictures with the five smiling students, while standing in
front of their page-turning science fair project.
After
the picture taking, he told them, “You got to keep on learning math and
science, and you guys are going to build all kinds of great things when you get
older.”
“You’re
already great inventors, with your brainstorming sessions and prototypes,” he
added.
One
student innocently asked the president, “Have you ever had a brainstorming
session, yourself?”
The
president smiled. “I had a couple brainstorming sessions, but I didn’t come up
with anything this good,” he said while pointing at the student’s page-turning
device.
The
official White House YouTube channel uploaded about an hour long video of the
2015 White House Science Fair (page-turning invention starts at 30:43) at
http://tinyurl.com/pgobn5e.
I
took a YouTube screen-capture of President Obama (shown below) watching the Supergirls Lego
book page-turner in action, and posted it at http://tinyurl.com/n9js5v3.
Tweets
about the science fair are using the Twitter hashtag, #WHScienceFair.
