In honor of Google's announcement of the 15 finalists for its 2013 Science Fair, we compiled our list of the most wild, inspiring, and exciting science fair projects from years past.
These are 16 of the most impressive teenager-led science projects we could find. And they all began with a simple question and a love of science.
These aren't foam volcanoes. These are cancer preventing chicken marinades and self-driving cars, nuclear fusion reactors and microbes that "eat" plastic.
These teenagers have made world-changing discoveries at a time in their lives when many of us were just trying to get through geometry class.
Ria Chhabra found that fruit flies that eat organic produce are healthier.
The teen from Dallas, Texas settled a long-standing debate between her parents over the merits of organic produce by feeding organic and conventional foods to fruit flies.
She began the project while still in middle school, and eventually submitted it to the 2011 Broadcom Masters science fair and was named one of the fair's 30 finalists.
She found that organically fed flies lived longer, had more babies, and showed more resistance to stress. Her research garnered headlines and settled the argument between her proud parents.
Here is her game-changing paper, which she published in the journal PLoS ONE in January.
Chhabra told the New York Times that she is considering MIT and Brown University for college, though she "has not ruled any school in or out."
Daniel Burd bred microbes that "eat" plastic trash.
Plastic bags are cheap and handy, but they suck for the environment. They last for years before they finally break down and wreak a lot of havoc in the process.
Canadian high-schooler Daniel Burd wondered why we can't just isolate the microorganisms that slowly 'eat' the plastic and concentrate them to speed up the process. In just six weeks his microbes reduced the volume of plastic by 43%.
The technology has to be tested much further, and the microbes would have to be contained somehow, said Karl Burkhardt on Mother Nature Network.
He took home first prize in the Canada-Wide Science Fair for his research called Plastic Not Fantastic and gave both environmentalists and dolphins a new reason to be stoked.
Eesha Khare developed supercapacitor technology that in the future could charge a battery. Fast.
We're getting ever closer to the day when smartphones are sewn right onto our hands, but battery technology is still pretty lame. But the problem is not necessarily that batteries run out, its that they take so. Long. To. Charge.
Eesha Khare of Saratoga designed a supercapacitor that might cut that process down a lot... to 30 seconds. Important to note that Khare used her device to charge a tiny LED, not a bulky smartphone, but this is still a huge leap in the right direction.
The project earned Khare a $50,000 check and second place at Intel ISEF 2013.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider