13 yr-old designs efficient solar collectors using Fibonacci sequence and trees
[01 Sep 2011]
This is a great story.
Thirteen year-old Aidan won a Young Naturalist Award with his re-design of solar collectors so they were more efficient. He used the Fibonacci sequence (1,1,2,3,5,8,…) and his observation of how trees make full use of the sun.
Here’s the link to the article Aidan wrote about his thinking and approach to this issue (complete with bibliography):
[The link is gone now - see the comments for why.]
This is great inspiration for those who think science is only for adults or dead people.
1 Sep 2011 at 10:30 pm [Comment permalink]
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2906538
The solar panels thing doesn’t actually work as well as hoped. Unfortunate.
2 Sep 2011 at 10:36 am [Comment permalink]
Oh yikes!
Yes, I was also sucked in to the “I want to believe it” and “it sounds feasible” mind set and I didn’t check the facts carefully.
It’s very disappointing that the American Museum of Natural History doesn’t have some sort of peer review process before awarding these prizes (or if they do, it failed in this case).
@Lord Omelette: Thanks for alerting me!
8 Sep 2011 at 4:15 am [Comment permalink]
[...] 13 yr-old designs efficient solar collectors using Fibonacci sequence and trees (squareCircleZ) [...]
10 Jul 2012 at 7:12 pm [Comment permalink]
this boy did very well and i want to believe is true. He should keep it up