A Different Kind of Science Fair

Yesterday, I was told that some of the 6th grade students were going to be put on a small science presentation for the faculty. I was expecting something along the lines of what I would find at a science fair back at home. I mean, how complex could a presentation given by a 6th grade student get, right?

So a couple students walked into the staffroom, they were probably close to about half my height. They had with them a toy car and truck, with some wires coming out of the body of the truck attached to a battery. I guess nothing too out of the ordinary yet. The students arranged their project on the table, then with straight backs, they began their presentation. I couldn't understand a lot of it since they were speaking in Gujarati, but I caught words like resistor, capacitor, photoelectric diode, etc.

They proceeded to do their demonstration, and honestly, I was blown away. In a nutshell, they designed and developed a miniature prototype for a photoelectric diode installation on the front of a car that can detect incoming beams of light and automatically adjust the brightness of its headbeams. They argued that this would dramatically improve highway safety at night when trucks often leave their highbeams on, temporarily blinding incoming traffic.




Afterwards, I took a short trip down memory lane, recalling my days in high school when I built robots for Science Olympiad. Unlike these students' inventions however, mine just drove around and picked up small objects. Needless to say, I was humbled and thoroughly impressed.