Yeah, I Invented That

June 29, 2008

What might just be better than kinetic energy? Young inventors. EurekaFest, an annual multi-day event that brings together high schoolers from across the country to share their inventions, just wrapped up this week in Cambridge, Mass., at MIT.

One impressive highlight from the four-day event was a Seussian enclosed electric motorcycle. Backed by a grant from the MIT-Lemelson program, the Experimental Vehicle Team of 17 from Saint Thomas Academy in Mendota Heights, Minn., built a $12,000 prototype that is safer and more efficient than other models out there. They anticipate that future models will cost about $6,000 to make. Personally, I just want to see Al Gore ride one.

While the green electric machine was cool, other brainy teams cranked out sweet machines:

Solar generator: Newberg High School, from Oregon, created a lightweight generator that harnesses solar power for energy. Its portability makes it ideal for remote, off-grid villages or disaster areas. The project came out of an assignment to build a Sterling engine, which has a fixed amount of gas.

Garden Consultant: Saratoga Springs High School, from New York, developed a system that measures environmental factors for a garden using sensors and recommends "perfect plants" best suited to those conditions. The teams expects the system to help green thumbs grow without chemicals by maximizing success with environmentally-appropriate plants.

Fish escalator: West Valley High School, from Spokane, Wash., came up with a device (photo above) to transport salmon over man-made dams to spawning grounds. Dams provide crucial energy along the Columbia River so the escalator would be an inexpensive way to solve salmon spawning problems while keeping the dams intact. And they get props for the Archimedes tie.

Photo: West Valley High School InvenTeam's fish escalator. Credit: Lemelson-MIT Program.