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High School Research Projects
Competitive science fairs
Environment Friendly Smart City
Motivated by the water, soil, and air pollution of her country, Angela has created hypothetically, a city that would be both close to nature and technologically smart. The most important appliances in the city are:
i) Solar and Wind Powered Windmill: windmills that use both wind and solar energy. They reduce the dependency on climate conditions and represent a more comprehensive energy source. Because they can work up to 12 hours, over the span of 7 years , electricity production will increase by up to 47%.
ii) Rain Water Harvesting: a technology used for collecting and storing rainwater. As the rooftop is the primary catchment area, the rainwater is collected in simple vessels at the edge of the roof. On average, using this method, one household saves up to 123000 liters.
iii) Rotating to the sun - solar panels: Their aim is to keep the solar photovoltaic panel perpendicular to the sun throughout the year to make them more efficient. It follows the movement of the sun as it rotates from the east to the west every day. If all solar panels change to be self-rotating, annually worldwide 7,56 x 10^10 more energy is produced.
Environment Friendly, Efficient and Sustainable Method of Cleaning Oil Spills using Fruit Peels
The purpose of this project is to investigate a sustainable way for cleaning oil spills.
Following the oil spill catastrophe located nearby my cousin's home in Piraeus, Greece, I discovered the problem that every appliance for cleaning petroleum leakages caused additional threats to the environment.
Succeeding the research, fruit peels were an excellent candidate, fulfilling the wetting property, known as the first condition for a successful adsorbent. The most effective combination was the mix of pomegranate, banana, apple, lemon, and orange in an equal ratio. In order for the cleaner to be used in practice, the greatest challenge was to create a product that is not only eco-friendly, but oleophilic, hydrophobic, eco-friendly, durable, and efficient.
We conducted three rounds of experiments.
The first round of experiments showed that the sorbent of fresh biomass, and nylon mesh is only oleophilic. The second one showed that sorbent out of jute mesh and sundried biomass is oleophilic, hydrophobic, eco-friendly, but not durable and efficient.
In the third round, we've used jute mesh, sundried biomass and, mesh coating with beeswax, which not only fulfilled the requirements, but absorbed up to 93% of the oil.
On the Ground and in the Air: Maximizing Air Travel Efficiency
The mission of this project is to deliver a pragmatic and feasible solution of a plane design, that still promises to deliver the massive efficiency boosts needed to power the aerospace industry of the future.
Our design eliminates the need for ailerons and flaps entirely with incorporating shape memory polymers into the wing skin. The polymers have “memorized” initial structures that, upon external stimulation, deform predictably to one of many possible states. This makes for greater fuel efficiency and a drastic reduction in wingtip vortices, which otherwise cause induced drag and are hazardous to trailing airplanes miles behind.
Carbon nanotubes shine where shape memory polymers are weak: they have high electrical conductivity and strength. In our design, a composite of the two materials creates a more durable, electroactive wing that can sustain flight loads even while morphing.
The implementation of quantum well thermoelectric generators along the body and wings of aircraft derives electricity from waste heat. Known for their reliability, low cost, and low weight, the generators will control the morphing of wings by activating the electroactive shape memory polymers.
A revamped onboard computer architecture must unify all the elements of our proposed solution. Avionics software is essential to all modern aircraft, whether it be for navigation, cabin entertainment, or auto piloting and would increase the safety and efficiency of our design.
An interesting and efficient method of learning high school physics content: The successful method of junkyard physics (physics based on games)
This study’s aim is to research the effect of serious games on helping and supporting primary and high school students on learning physics concept and problems, from the easy everyday concepts to engineering theory.
As the internet today changes the world, games indeed change the ways in which students learn today. In this study, we examine how high school students learn by using prototypes of Junkyard Physics. We used both simple games, teaching students basic physical concepts related to electricity, magnetism, light and color and complex games, teaching students hard physics problems. And after two weeks of using these games, we compared the abilities on two groups, where the first one includes students who learned by themselves from textbooks, and the second group includes students who used our games. The results indicated that games can be more effective in the learning process than written texts.