Can you help?

Fact 4

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Can you help?

Glossary

pollution: (n.) damage caused to water, air, etc. by harmful substances or waste. research: (v.) to study a subject in detail, especially in order to discover new information. The world is facing many problems. These include a changing climate, not enough clean water, health challenges, and the pollution of our air, oceans and land. It’s amazing how many young people have spent time and effort to research these and other problems and come up with solutions that benefit us all.

Boyan Slat was born in the Netherlands in 1994. He was 16 when he became aware of the problem of plastic pollution in our oceans. He did a high school project on it and then, after a lot of research, he came up with an idea that could solve this terrible problem. Glossary

aware: (adj.) having knowledge or experience of a particular thing.

Glossary

booms: (pl. n.) long poles on a boat that move and have a sail fastened to it. unharmed: (adj.) not hurt or damaged. Boyan Slat is now the CEO of the company he founded. It’s called The Ocean Cleanup. His idea is to use a series of floating booms with processing platforms. These could collect floating plastic but allow fish and plankton to pass through unharmed. The collected plastic could then be recycled. The company has raised more than 31 million dollars and is now working on putting Slat’s ideas into practice. The company also researches other new technologies that could clean up our oceans. He was awarded ‘European Entrepreneur of the Year in 2018.

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Glossary

ponds: (pl. n.) areas of water smaller than a lake. Lalita Prasida Sripada Srisai, was only 11 years old when she started working on her idea. She knew that one big problem in her community in rural India was finding clean water to drink. The main source of drinking water there is ponds, where the water is often contaminated.

She also noticed that farmers in the area left piles of waste corncobs lying by the roadside. She had learned in school about how things like fruit peel and eggshells can be used to absorb contaminants to purify water. She wondered if corncobs could do the same Glossary

peel: (n.) the skin of fruit and vegetables, especially after it has been removed. corncobs: (pl. n.) the part of the maize plant on which the grain grows.

She began experimenting and researching and developed a filter that uses corncobs in four ways - in long sections, in chunky pieces, in powder and finally as charcoal (mixed with sand) to produce clean water. Sisri has won awards for her idea, and is working to prefect her system.

We all know that germs cause disease. So this is a very useful invention: a self-sanitizing door handle! Two teens from Hong

Kong, Sun Ming Wong aged 17, and King Pong Li, aged 18, have developed a bacteria-killing handle for a door.

Glossary

chunky: (adj.)

describes a thick, solid piece of something. handle: (n.) a part of the door designed to open it.

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Glossary

coated: (past tense v.) to cover or spread a layer of a substance on something to protect or finish it.

The teens looked for a material that could kill bacteria and after a lot of research they found the ideal substance. They coated their handles with titanium oxide. and integrated an LED light into the handles to activate the titanium oxide.

Apparently their invention destroys 99.8% of all bacteria and viruses. And since it only costs around $13 per handle, authorities should be thinking of installing it in all public lavatories. Supermarkets might use the same system for their shopping carts, too. Glossary

lavatory: (n.) public bathroom.

Glossary

biofuel: (n.) a fuel that is made from living things or their waste like plants or plastic.

Azza Abdel Hamid Faiad, from Egypt, was 16 when she had her big idea: how to turn plastic into biofuel. The idea is not new, but what is new is the cheap ‘catalyst’ she proposes to use. It’s called aluminosilicate. It breaks down plastic waste and produces products like methane, propane and ethane, which can then be converted into ethanol.

Experts think that her inexpensive catalyst could be used to create $78 million worth of biofuel a year. She won an award for her invention at the 23rd European Union Contest for Young Scientists in 2011 and since then she has been working to put her invention into practice on a large scale.

Glossary

tailpipe: (n.) the pipe at the back of a vehicle through which waste gas escapes.

There’s room to mention just one more cool idea. This comes from Param Jaggi from the US. He was just 15 when he invented a device that fits over the tailpipe of a car. Exhaust fumes from the engine pass through a live colony of algae. Photosynthesis occurs, and the carbon dioxide is converted into oxygen and sugar.

Look on the internet, to find more inventions by young people working for a better future for us all.