Girls Sweep Google Global Science Fair
Posted on July 17th, 2011 by Mary Lord
Teachers struggling to get girls jazzed about STEM take heart. Of 10,000 students who competed in Google’s inaugural global science fair, three young women soared to the top, including Texas high school student Shree Bose, who won the grand prize for her work on drug resistance in treating ovarian cancer.
Filed under: K-12 Education News | 1 Comment »
Tags: Competitions for Students, Contest, Contests, Corporations, google global science fair, Science Contest
An ethanol-powered electric vehicle that can travel the equivalent of 81.9 miles per gallon clinched the EcoCAR Challenge for a team of Virginia Tech engineering students. They beat 15 other student teams in the three-year competition, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and General Motors, to design a more fuel-efficient, environmentally friendly car with the same consumer appeal and safety as today’s models.
Two Houston engineers have won a competition for low-cost experiments that high school students could send aboard a suborbital space flight. They have designed an inexpensive microgravity spaceflight kit that allows students to conduct three experiments demonstrating important principles of science and engineering.
A group of North Carolina students is literally on the fast track to going green. On May 19, design teams from Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools raced their biofuel-powered vehicles in the annual Go Green Go-Kart Competition hosted by the school system’s career center. The contest drew a whopping 24 teams, up from 11 teams last year.
Cheering crowds. An ESPN crew. Who knew math could generate as much excitement as the NBA playoffs? Ask Scott Wu. On May 7, the Baton Rouge, La., eighth grader beat 223 other middle-school “mathletes” from around the country to win the 2011 Raytheon MATHCOUNTS national competition in Washington, D.C. 
Twelve students have won the National STEM Video Game Challenge, according to Education Week. They include a team of students who developed a game called, “You Make Me Sick!” to teach about bacteria and viruses. Inspired by the Educate to Innovate Campaign, President Obama’s initiative to promote a renewed focus on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) education, the contest aims to motivate interest in STEM learning among America’s youth by tapping into students’ natural passions for playing and making video games.
In his State of the Union address, President Obama urged Americans to “teach our kids that it’s not just the winner of the Super Bowl who deserves to be celebrated, but the winner of the science fair.” Last week, the sports-fan-in-chief made good on that vow by welcoming 40 high school STEM superstars — finalists in this year’s Intel Science Talent Search — to the White House.
The 
What do you call a design problem that includes a futuristic twist and extreme deadline pressure? One of Project Lead the Way’s most daunting–and engaging–challenges, as Pennsylvania students discovered at a recent competition to create a maglev vehicle in just 2.5 hours using only a laptop, bag of parts and their wits. 
