While your kids are making popsicle art, these kids made viable inventions, reports US News.
Many of them aren’t even teenagers yet, but their inventions could cause big changes—the Connecticut team designed a “Smart Sticker” that turns from green to red if a food container isn’t properly refrigerated, while the Ohio team created an erasable barcode that disappears if meat is stored at temperatures above 40 degrees.
For their efforts, both teams will receive funding to help them through the patent process and then additional funding to help turn their ideas into a marketable product. The contest is an offshoot of the popular high school FIRST Robotics competition for younger students. Leaders of the program said they decided to help students patent their ideas after the students themselves showed interest.
“They had a problem and decided, we’re going to solve this by having a real world product we think is patentable,” says Jon Dudas, president of FIRST and former director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. “We should have thought of that ourselves, of course, but on their own, they decided that they didn’t want to stop with just a project.”
Photo by Conor Lawless