9 Cool Google Science Fair Projects Of 2011 That Will Leave You Stunned

Have you heard about the latest murmur about the Google’s new venture? Google this time has involved lot many people in the project. Without further delay let me tell as to what’s the latest endeavor by Google. To motivate the young talent across the world Google planned to conduct its first science fair in which the contestants were to submit their ideas and compete with the other resourceful brains all over

Entitled Google Science Fair Projects 2011, it’s an online science fair that allows students from the age of 13 to 18 compete with each other either as an individual or in teams.

For entering the Google Science Fair Project contest, the participants were supposed to devise a hypothesis and create an experiment to test it, followed by sending in the demo of the projects in either a two-minute video or a 20-slide presentation.

There were as many as 7,500 entries submitted from more than 90 countries. The team of teachers at Google checked each entry, evaluated the creativity, scientific merit and global relevance. After properly scrutinizing the projects in detail which was one daunting task, 60 semi-finalists were chosen; dividing them into three age brackets (13-14, 15-16 and 17-18).

That’s not all, these were further narrowed down and top 15 global finalists were chosen. Out of these 15 only three will make it to the finals, one in each age category and finally, the Grand Prize winner will be announced.

Google along with European Centre for Nuclear Research, the Lego Group, National Geographic, and Scientific American will be awarding the winners with the scholarship, once in a lifetime experience award, personalized Lego prize and digital access to Scientific American archives for their school, and the grand prize winner will be receiving 10-day trip to the Galapagos Islands with National Geographic Expeditions.

Along with the award winners chosen by the jury members, Google is also awarding a People’s Choice Award and the winner will receive a $10,000 scholarship. Listed below are the 9 Google Science Fair Projects 2011 that left the team of teachers at Google amazed for their creative ingenuity and will certainly leave you stunned too. Take a look.

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(Age 13-14)

Teaching Robots to Speak English : (Programming in Pure English)

Submitted by: Luke Taylor (South Africa)

In today’s technologically advanced world, human beings are becoming more dependent on the robots but the problem that prevails till date is that not all robots can understand human language. Luke Taylor thought out of the box and came up with the idea of designing an application that can translate English instructions directly into compliable code that a robot can execute. The main aim of the project was to assist those struggling with existing graphic and text-based programming languages. Luke Taylor limited his design and testing to a prototype robot called Tribot and used basic set of instructions thereby creating an application that analyzes and translates English sentences into C-code. Also, it compiles and downloads them thereby assisting users via prompts that request required information to program the robot.

Detecting Colors at the Edge : (Color Image Edge Detection Using Clifford Algebra)

Submitted by: Anika Raghuvanshi  (USA)

Clifford Algebra provides efficient representation and manipulation of multi-dimensional vector spaces. According to Anika Raghuvanshi’s hypothesis Clifford Algebra could be an effective at edge detection in color image processing and better than the Canny Edge Detection. Color images are represented by pixels with three components and operate simultaneously on multiple components is more efficient in Clifford Algebra. Using a sample set of images; the Anika applied the Canny Edge Detection method with the help of a C program and then applied Clifford Algebra techniques to the images thereby resulting in far better results than Canny Edge Detection. On combining the two methods the results came out to be even more accurate.

Going Bionic : (EEG & Prosthetics)

Submitted by: Anand Srinivasan (USA)

Many people today who lose their limb don’t opt for the prosthetic technology as it doesn’t offer the same dexterity and maneuverability as original limb which forces them to learn to function without it. To let patients heave a sigh of relief Anand Srinivasan hypothesized that brainwave data from an EEG could help by providing signal processing and data classification to produce a better brain-machine interface. The prosthetic limb doesn’t struggle with the age-old problems of noise filtering, artifact extraction.

(Age 15-16)

Do Genes Have Flavor? : (I Can Taste Your DNA)

Submitted by: Georgia Bondy (UK)

Can we taste genes when we kiss or have other human contact? Georgia Bondy with his research can tried to find out the answer to this question. He conducted an experiment based on the control of a male’s ability to sense a female’s Histocompatibility Gene with his nose. While experimenting, the male candidates were asked to rate their affinity to 5 females’ smell and taste. It was found that there was no correlation. However, in the extreme case, it was found that there is a strong correlation in a few cases suggesting that taste is only useful when a female is strongly attractive/repulsive to a male.

Breaking Down the Day : (A Novel Aid with Facial Detection, Facial Recognition, and Audio Analysis Capabilities for Patients with Dementia or Communication Disorders and their Caretakers)

Submitted by: Dora Chen (USA)

All around the world, every now and then people are diagnosed with dementia-causing diseases and it becomes almost impossible for the caregivers and guardians to be with the patients 24×7. Dora Chen from USA in the quest to develop a system that collects the important events in a day and combines the events into a concise record for patients or caregivers did the experimentation which resulted in video-audio recorder that makes it easier for the caregivers in decision-making based upon facial detection, facial recognition, and audio analysis. Thereby becoming an aid for the caretakers and helping them keep a check on record of a day’s important events.

Building a Better Password : (Comparison of Biometric Keystroke Analysis Methods)

Submitted by: Jacob Buckman (USA)

In today’s web world, the probability of getting the accounts hacked is pretty high. It is observed that an average Internet user has over 20 online accounts and 66% of the people use only one or two passwords to access all their accounts. Jacob Buckman made the study to determine which characteristic of typing is most unique and will yield a better biometric times in between keystrokes or length of time keys are held down. In the project the hypothesis is that there will be a significant difference between the accuracy of each. The study showed that both the means were pretty accurate and could be used to potentially replace passwords.

(Age 17-18)

Slaying the Vampires Among Your Devices : (Intelligent Power Management of Computer Peripherals)

Submitted by: Ankush Gupta (USA)

With the ever mounting increase in the use of technology, there is increase in both energy consumption and the carbon footprint of people in the world. Ankush Gupta developed the project in which Domotics-the science of using electronic techniques to manage household devices has evolved significantly so much so that it can be programmatically implemented in an efficient and inexpensive manner. The research posited that a new application could use domotic technology to manage the power states of computers and peripherals using PowerLine Carrier signals in an efficient and smart manner.

Making Cars Greener : (A working model of a device capable of filtering out carbon dioxide from car exhausts)

Submitted by: Jun Bing and Alec Wang (New Zealand)

To help reduce the carbon footprint and reduce the rate of climate change due to global warming and the greenhouse effect, Jun Bing along with Alec Wang developed the project using carbonic acid reactions with alkaline sodium hydroxide solution to form sodium carbonate (Na2CO3) and water. The whole process is known as acid base neutralization reaction which helps sequestering CO2 gas thereby converting it in such a way that it can be stored, used or sold easily.

Harvesting Crops with a Bike : (Cutting Edge Technology)

Submitted by: Tanmay Shankar (India)

The project deals with the new and innovative methods of harvesting crops. Cutting edge technology is the answer to the inexpensive, multipurpose, built from easily available resources, requiring little or no fuel, easy to operate, environmental friendly and efficient smart solution for the farmers. The cutting edge technology harvests the crops easily. The device threshes crops and can be easily modified to tackle different varieties of crops.

Listed above are nine Google Science Fair projects that successfully beating the rest of the contestants reached list of top fifteen finalists. We have listed three amazing projects in various age groups promising to make the difference in our lives. The finalists will be flown out to Google Headquarters in Mountain View, CA, to participate in the final judging round and awards ceremony on 11 July 2011. Time itself will tell which all will top the chart.

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