Asian American Boy Invents Solar Energy Panel Enhancer
September 18, 2008
For the majority of people, the sentence “when I was 12 years old…” usually follows with “playing outside,” “riding my bike,” or something rather similar. Not that William Yuan of Portland, Oregon doesn’t play outside or ride his bike, but “inventing a highly-efficient 3D nanotube solar cell for visible and ultraviolet light” normally doesn’t accompany the sweet memories of our adolescence.
Yuan, only twelve years old, attends Meadow Park Middle School as a seventh grader. He has already been exposed to the subjects of nanotechnology and nuclear fusion. He was recently awarded by the Davidson Institute of Talent Development as the Davidson Fellow and a scholarship of $25,000 for creating a three dimensional panel that absorbs both visible and UV light.
“Regular solar cells are only 2D and only allow light interaction once,” Yuan explained.
According to the Davidson Institute’s official release, Yuan “designed carbon nanotubes to overcome the barriers of electron movement, doubling the light electricity conversion efficiency.” Yuan also “developed a model for solar towers and a computer program to simulate and optimize the tower parameters.
Yuan will fly to Washington D.C. to formally accept the title and award. His hobbies include chess, legos, and taekwondo. Learn more about William Yuan and his amazing discovery!
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6 Responses to “Asian American Boy Invents Solar Energy Panel Enhancer”
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Hey, Art:
What’s this prodigy’s SAT score?
And what nanoweight does he add to “Asian” profiles?
Genius comes in individual units and pays scant heed to mass medians or racial/cultural conceits.
Este es un muchacho muy listo, las autoridades academicas deberian apoyarlo y probarlo porbablemente sea de bien a la humanidad.
The standards based people will add his project to the list of what a “hard working, well taught” 7th grade should “know and be able to do. You CAN’T teach this stuff to kids, but that’s what ed reform is based on. Set the “outcome” to whatever wunderkinder you can find, and don’t worry about actually teaching anything, afterall, it works on kids like this.
I wonder what kind of measures will be taken to ensure the progress of Yuan’s work to consumer markets, rather than being taken over by government agencies, or grant hungry universities.
This kid’s a plagiarist nothing more I know a professor at my school who published ideas on this stuff a year ago.
http://www.gatech.edu/newsroom/release.html?id=1337
He even used the exact same pictures on his science board as are in this professor’s flash presentation.
I hope for his sake he doesn’t except the money unless he wants a lawsuit from Georgia Tech or the Air Force.
Why is he still in Middle School? I am surprised that considering his talents he’s not attending an enginering isntitute-MIT.