Welcome to Interesting If True, the podcast that sometimes teaches you things

I'm your host this week, Shea, and with me is Aaron

I'm Aaron, and this week I actually learned bees actually are terrible little monsters that all need to be replaced with robots.

It turns out that, thanks the U.S. Military nuclear testing (like in episode 49) American honey is radiologically distinct. As in, it contains cesium. Bees are horrible little jerks!

The Science Fair

As an antithesis to most of our crazy stories, this week I decided to look into real science. And because I am not an engineer and my main subject of study was english I thought I would look up stuff I could easily understand, science fair projects. I was wrong. I still don't understand most of these amazing projects. I made the mistake of looking up top science fair winners and I didn’t find fun projects measuring the amount of electricity a lemon produces. I found world changing ideas and ingenuity that far too many adults have lost sight of. Today I give you a run down of some of the top young adult science fair winners from around the globe.

One of the bigger science fairs in the world was hosted by Google. Starting in 2011 the competition was open to 13- to 18-year-old students around the globe, who formulate a hypothesis, perform an experiment, and present their results. All students must have an internet connection and a free Google Account to participate, and the projects must be in English, German, Italian, Spanish, or French. The final submission must include ten sections, which are the summary, an "About Me" page, the steps of the project, and a works cited page. Entries are judged on eight core criteria, which include the student's presentation, question, hypothesis, research, experiment, data, observations, and conclusion. Prizes are awarded to three finalists. The grand prize includes a National Geographic trip to the Galapagos Islands, and a US$50,000 scholarship; finalists will also receive a US$15,000 scholarship and assorted packages from sponsoring organizations. Holy cow, I feel like I would have worked a lot harder on my leamon project had I had these incentives. Unfortunately the last competition was held in 2018 and there has been no news about continuing the competition. I’m guessing once we are all safe from covid we will hopefully see this come back, because as you will see, there have been some incredible breakthroughs and ideas coming from these kids.

Our first Project is made even cooler by it also being the first ever winner from the Google science fair. Shree Bose won Google’s first Science Fair grand prize for her novel way to treat ovarian cancer.

“On a bright, sunny day years ago, a timid, little girl walked through the doors of her elementary school gym carrying a dead, shriveled spinach plant. Blotchy stained blue from repeated, inept injections with food coloring, and withered from weeks of forgotten waterings and neglect, the plant appeared to have all the classic signs of abuse from the shy, unsuspecting perpetrator who proudly held it.The girl stood happily in front of her crudely-made, handwritten project board – eagerly explaining her original idea to anyone who would listen. Her invention, blue spinach for kids, provided an alternative for children who would not eat their green vegetables. Her ingenious solution? Turn the food blue, and, of course, children would happily eat their healthy foods.The little girl explained this excitedly to the passerbys – intently recounting the difficulty of injecting the plant with the dye. Some laughed. Others simply stared. And with that unlikely start, a still-enduring scientific interest was sparked.”

And thus starts the great life journey of Shree Bose, this comes right from her About me page on her science fair website.