5 ms·

"while browsing the MIT Department of Materials Science and Engineering’s website, a site she said she checks weekly to see “if there’s anything new.” does any

by alva 9y ago

"while browsing the MIT Department of Materials Science and Engineering’s website, a site she said she checks weekly to see “if there’s anything new.” does anyone believe these stories? they seem to be popping up more often.

stefanpie 9y ago
I am part of this area of high school / pre college research and part of a high school that is successful in having students reach high levels of high school research including myself, so I can shed some insight. These kinds of stories show up all the time and it is usually the case that they have received some kind of outside help. But in the world of competitive high school research, there is a lot more emphasis on making innovations which are successful and more immediately applicable at the trade off of being something superficial or abandoning projects or ideas that don't appear to be immediately amazing or successful since they are easy to quickly dismiss in a competitive environment. However, there are plenty of amazing students who go on and win ISEF and other top competitions who collaborate with professors and engineers and I certainly encourage collaboration like this. Although, within my own research, I have remained independent since at my school, my research director's and other research teachers' main field is in biology or chemistry, leaving little domain specific assistance for me who has perused projects with heavy electrical engineering and computer science knowledge and skills. I have tried to reach out to professors before, but I can be hard to find someone whose project ideas and interests align with yours (without having to travel long distances to meet and work with them at their universities which I am able to do). The world of high school research is fiercely competitive and without some kind of collaboration or connections with professors and professionals, it becomes almost impossible to reach the top and be successful. I have managed to do this on my own but it has been a struggle and very competitive and hard journey in which I regret not finding someone such as a professor to work with. I sometimes worry that my research friends and high schoolers that pursue research will abandon or forget about the idea core values of research and collaboration in the unforgiving world of high school competitive research. I know this has kinda turned into a rant but if you have any questions about the world of competitive research or my own research I would be glad to talk about it since I rarely see this subject talked about outside of the high school research community.
- spikels 9y ago
  Maybe high school aged people don't need paragraph breaks but older people like me do.
  - bradknowles 9y ago
    Paragraph breaks would be nice, yes. But I’m willing to be more forgiving when it comes to younger people who may not have had the opportunity yet to learn the wisdom of years. So, for example, if you are 50 or younger, I would be likely to be more forgiving of your response to the high schooler. ;)
- madengr 9y ago
  Need English too, to learn about paragraphs.
- datalog19908 9y ago
  > "unforgiving world of high school competitive research" wtf? learn and be curious. Have fun.
GuiA 9y ago
I believe them, because I see the amount of support these kids get (highly educated + available parents & teachers, with large budgets). I have a coworker who graduated high school not so long ago, and her high school had an industrial design studio with better equipment (laser cutters, 3D printers, CNC machines, metal lathes, etc.) than the design studio I work in. My own high school, in comparison, had maybe 20-30 computers for about 1000 students. It can be upsetting to read these things if one feels that they'd have thrived in such a supportive environment, but instead only had indifferent teachers/a school with little budget/etc and had to do without such support. But it's not a reason to doubt the veracity of any of it, or hate on the kids; these kids are sharp and hardworking and doing their best, they just happen to also be much more privileged than average.
- forapurpose 9y ago
  > My own high school, in comparison, had maybe 20-30 computers for about 1000 students. I had some old college-level comp sci books I was getting rid of (C++ by Stroustrup, etc.) and thought I would call a the magnet tech high school in the local inner city. The books were old editions, but why not ask? A teacher was indeed interested and even personally came to my home and picked up the books. He told me that if I had any old computer equipment - anything at all, even if it didn't boot - they could use that too. This is the tech magnet high school. What opportunity do those kids have? How much talent is lost? It's sickening.
- jnbiche 9y ago
  I think you hit just the right note here. Yes, recognize that the child is benefiting from economic privilege and readily-available mentors that aren't available to most children, but at the same time, recognize that these kids are hard-working and smart (and above all, they're kids).
philipkglass 9y ago
I believe it. I had a home lab when I was a child. The Web didn't exist yet, but I read the scientific publications that were available at the library. It used to be common enough that there were books published about how to set up a lab and do research at home, like there were about setting up a home dark room for photography. (More recently I met someone who even had his own NMR (second hand, non-superconducting, but still) at home, was doing sophomore ochem lab activities at home at age 13, and left for university by age 15.) It takes a child of remarkable interests and aptitude to win a national competition, of course. That's why you're reading about her specifically. It also takes unusually supportive parents. A sizable minority of American families with children could afford a home lab, equipment, and supplies if a child were so inclined and the parents encouraged it, but I suspect it's rarer for parents to OK funding it than other costly-but-more-common extracurricular activities or adult hobbies. Half of the battle is just having parents who understand you well enough to support what you want to do.
- afpx 9y ago
  Agreed. As a child of the 80s, one of my favorite things to do was have my mom drop me off at the local university library. I used to just sit in the reference section and devour information. Of course, I never had any mentors or really even anyone with a bachelors degree in my life. So, my comprehension was very low. But, it didn’t stop me from dreaming and reading and thinking. I can only imagine how amazing it must be to be a curious kid in the 2010s. On the other hand, I think it requires natural and insatiable curiousity. For instance, myy kids, while quite smart, certainly don’t have the same thirst.
  - hycaria 9y ago
    A bit off topic, but how do you manage not to be dissapointed by this last fact ?
    - afpx 9y ago
      I guess it is a little disappointing, at first. But, as a parent, you learn to embrace your children’s interests and help them in the direction they choose to go. Although you can force and manipulate them into doing things (and, sometimes it makes sense to do so), at a certain point one realizes that motivation is very personal. That is, you can setup the environment to encourage interest. But, if there’s still no interest, even incidental, the outcomes won’t match the expectations. For a silly example, imagine a parent with a passion for collecting dust. They try every trick to make their children also enjoy it. But, whatever they try, the kids would rather play baseball. What does the parent do? They can make everyone miserable by continuing to force dust into every aspect of life. Or, they can learn to enjoy baseball. Fortunately, a very curious parent can easily learn to enjoy things that they normally wouldn’t enjoy.
Johnny555 9y ago
Her parents are both engineers, it's not hard to believe they are helping to guide her interests to STEM.
swendoog 9y ago
eh, no. What is far more likely than an 11 year old girl browsing MIT website? And 11 year old girl with parent(s) who were likely heavily, heavily involved. And the media loves a "look what this child did!" story, when in reality, their parents did the bulk of the work / study. edit: bring on the downvotes. this forum seems to really hate anyone who is slightly pessimistic / realistic. I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm just saying that the likelihood of an 11 year old organically doing something like this is very low, compared to say, her parents putting some strong wind in her sails.
- Johnny555 9y ago
  this forum seems to really hate anyone who is slightly pessimistic / realistic. I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm just saying that the likelihood of an 11 year old organically doing something like this is very low, compared to say, her parents putting some strong wind in her sails. My science fair project was heavily guided by two instructors. I doubt that any significant high school science fair project is done without any outside assistance at all. Getting help from experts in the field should be seen as a good thing, not a reason to dismiss the project. https://student.societyforscience.org/basics https://student.societyforscience.org/basics Creating an independent research project doesn’t mean you can’t ask for help. Parents, teachers, experts and other students may offer to help you on your project. Figuring out what kind of help is fair — and what type of help is not — can be tricky. Below are several stories from Science News for Kids that help offer guidance on that issue. Many students find a mentor to help them refine what questions to ask and how to answer them. Ideally, a mentor should never tell you what to do (even if you ask). Instead, a good mentor will help you find information that will inform your decisions on what to do and how to do it. For example, this story from Science News for Students gives examples of the proper roles played by mentors. This article discusses the advantages of working with a mentor. Meanwhile, we feature in this story the rewarding example of a young student who had the courage to contact an outside expert in the topic he was researching.
- vacri 9y ago
  So the head of a science department should be snubbed because they're supported by a team doing work for them? Since when did science become A Pursuit Of The Lone Hero?
Mz 9y ago
Former secular homeschooling parent. Sounds completely normal to me. --> "You have kids who don't do things like that? What planet are you from?"
rz2k 9y ago
Take a look at its news section: https://dmse.mit.edu/news https://dmse.mit.edu/news It looks interesting, and the articles are accessible to an intelligent 11 year-old without being written to appeal to that age group. It's easy to forget how stifling it is to be young and have so much of what you're given to read tainted by pedagogical writing style. Of course your reaction isn't unusual either. As people get older they learn not to talk about interests that are too specific until they know people well.
Fomite 9y ago
Kids are good at deep, intense fixation. For awhile, I was obsessed with aerogels, for reasons I still don't fully understand, and did occasionally stop by the local university library to read up on them.
pnathan 9y ago
Absolutely. Former homeschooled nerd. Having an intellectual interest and focus was normal in my household.
danso 9y ago
Yep, that was the kind of thing I did even on 28.8K modems. Minus the winning prizes part.
dominotw 9y ago
Indian parents in america are in mad rush to get their kids into top schools. They start "college prep" at 5 yr old ( eg: http://northsouth.org/public/main/home.aspx/ http://northsouth.org/public/main/home.aspx/), spelling bees, kumon ect .They know simply acing tests is not enough anymore. They know what other parents are also doing. Hard to get a leg up by simply studying more. I won't be surprised if we see more of the indian child prodigies in coming years when bulk of indian immigrants kids hit that age. http://www.extremetech.com/electronics/156361-teenage-girl-creates-tiny-device-that-could-charge-a-smartphone-in-20-seconds http://www.extremetech.com/electronics/156361-teenage-girl-c...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- QAPereo 9y ago
  I won’t be surprised if you see a rash of suicides...
  - pizza 9y ago
    why would you be, that's already underway
    - QAPereo 9y ago
      I get the sense the poster I was replying to would be.
      - pizza 9y ago
        (fwiw i didn't downvote you, and upon reflection we're probably saying the same thing. peace)
L_Rahman 9y ago
It's difficult to imagine because there has been a not widely acknowledged rise over the last twenty years of incredibly well-resourced parents who spend all of their available time, energy and money on their children. Elite education (Ivies, Stanford, MIT, Chicago, Hopkins) historically was almost entirely the playground of the already rich. From the 70s onwards, it became a competitive game for the working upper middle class to send their children there. This elite stamp was necessary for their children to at least maintain working upper middle class status but ideally they'd collide with one of the already rich kinds and enter the wealth not labor class. As income inequality has grown, admission to these institutions have grown even more valuable and parents have dedicated even more resources to giving their children a shot. The result is that the children of well educated professionals end up in incredibly well resourced environments at home and in their schools. For context, the neighborhood this girl lives in has a median family income of 109,000 dollars, is 91% white and has only 2% of its population living below the poverty line.
MichaelMoser123 9y ago
I have looked up the site of this department - it looks very sparse , unless you can log in that is (it has a news section, to be fair). I guess one needs some fairy dust, sometimes.
cortexio 9y ago
All kids are retards. There are no exceptions. What kids do is either not impressive or they didn't do it themselfs. I know people want to believe there are exceptions. But nope. Kids are just kids, some are less retarded than others. Americans love these types of stories. Make her a transgender and they will love it even more. Maybe next year. Djeez,, people are so pathetic.
louprado 9y ago
Does anyone have a link to the article on the lead detector ? To comment on your question, my favorite past time as a child was walking the aisles of a hardware store or Radio Shack hoping to find a tool or device I had never seen before. If the store had a parts catalog, I would take it home and read every page. The girl in the article is doing the same only in a different format. It is bizarre that an activity one child finds so fascinating and gratifying is seen as painfully dull and pointless by another child.

by alva 9y ago

stefanpie 9y ago

I am part of this area of high school / pre college research and part of a high school that is successful in having students reach high levels of high school research including myself, so I can shed some insight. These kinds of stories show up all the time and it is usually the case that they have received some kind of outside help. But in the world of competitive high school research, there is a lot more emphasis on making innovations which are successful and more immediately applicable at the trade off of being something superficial or abandoning projects or ideas that don't appear to be immediately amazing or successful since they are easy to quickly dismiss in a competitive environment. However, there are plenty of amazing students who go on and win ISEF and other top competitions who collaborate with professors and engineers and I certainly encourage collaboration like this. Although, within my own research, I have remained independent since at my school, my research director's and other research teachers' main field is in biology or chemistry, leaving little domain specific assistance for me who has perused projects with heavy electrical engineering and computer science knowledge and skills. I have tried to reach out to professors before, but I can be hard to find someone whose project ideas and interests align with yours (without having to travel long distances to meet and work with them at their universities which I am able to do). The world of high school research is fiercely competitive and without some kind of collaboration or connections with professors and professionals, it becomes almost impossible to reach the top and be successful. I have managed to do this on my own but it has been a struggle and very competitive and hard journey in which I regret not finding someone such as a professor to work with. I sometimes worry that my research friends and high schoolers that pursue research will abandon or forget about the idea core values of research and collaboration in the unforgiving world of high school competitive research. I know this has kinda turned into a rant but if you have any questions about the world of competitive research or my own research I would be glad to talk about it since I rarely see this subject talked about outside of the high school research community.

spikels 9y ago
Maybe high school aged people don't need paragraph breaks but older people like me do.
- bradknowles 9y ago
  Paragraph breaks would be nice, yes. But I’m willing to be more forgiving when it comes to younger people who may not have had the opportunity yet to learn the wisdom of years. So, for example, if you are 50 or younger, I would be likely to be more forgiving of your response to the high schooler. ;)
madengr 9y ago
Need English too, to learn about paragraphs.
datalog19908 9y ago
> "unforgiving world of high school competitive research" wtf? learn and be curious. Have fun.

GuiA 9y ago

I believe them, because I see the amount of support these kids get (highly educated + available parents & teachers, with large budgets). I have a coworker who graduated high school not so long ago, and her high school had an industrial design studio with better equipment (laser cutters, 3D printers, CNC machines, metal lathes, etc.) than the design studio I work in. My own high school, in comparison, had maybe 20-30 computers for about 1000 students. It can be upsetting to read these things if one feels that they'd have thrived in such a supportive environment, but instead only had indifferent teachers/a school with little budget/etc and had to do without such support. But it's not a reason to doubt the veracity of any of it, or hate on the kids; these kids are sharp and hardworking and doing their best, they just happen to also be much more privileged than average.

forapurpose 9y ago
> My own high school, in comparison, had maybe 20-30 computers for about 1000 students. I had some old college-level comp sci books I was getting rid of (C++ by Stroustrup, etc.) and thought I would call a the magnet tech high school in the local inner city. The books were old editions, but why not ask? A teacher was indeed interested and even personally came to my home and picked up the books. He told me that if I had any old computer equipment - anything at all, even if it didn't boot - they could use that too. This is the tech magnet high school. What opportunity do those kids have? How much talent is lost? It's sickening.
jnbiche 9y ago
I think you hit just the right note here. Yes, recognize that the child is benefiting from economic privilege and readily-available mentors that aren't available to most children, but at the same time, recognize that these kids are hard-working and smart (and above all, they're kids).

philipkglass 9y ago

I believe it. I had a home lab when I was a child. The Web didn't exist yet, but I read the scientific publications that were available at the library. It used to be common enough that there were books published about how to set up a lab and do research at home, like there were about setting up a home dark room for photography. (More recently I met someone who even had his own NMR (second hand, non-superconducting, but still) at home, was doing sophomore ochem lab activities at home at age 13, and left for university by age 15.) It takes a child of remarkable interests and aptitude to win a national competition, of course. That's why you're reading about her specifically. It also takes unusually supportive parents. A sizable minority of American families with children could afford a home lab, equipment, and supplies if a child were so inclined and the parents encouraged it, but I suspect it's rarer for parents to OK funding it than other costly-but-more-common extracurricular activities or adult hobbies. Half of the battle is just having parents who understand you well enough to support what you want to do.

afpx 9y ago
Agreed. As a child of the 80s, one of my favorite things to do was have my mom drop me off at the local university library. I used to just sit in the reference section and devour information. Of course, I never had any mentors or really even anyone with a bachelors degree in my life. So, my comprehension was very low. But, it didn’t stop me from dreaming and reading and thinking. I can only imagine how amazing it must be to be a curious kid in the 2010s. On the other hand, I think it requires natural and insatiable curiousity. For instance, myy kids, while quite smart, certainly don’t have the same thirst.
- hycaria 9y ago
  A bit off topic, but how do you manage not to be dissapointed by this last fact ?
  - afpx 9y ago
    I guess it is a little disappointing, at first. But, as a parent, you learn to embrace your children’s interests and help them in the direction they choose to go. Although you can force and manipulate them into doing things (and, sometimes it makes sense to do so), at a certain point one realizes that motivation is very personal. That is, you can setup the environment to encourage interest. But, if there’s still no interest, even incidental, the outcomes won’t match the expectations. For a silly example, imagine a parent with a passion for collecting dust. They try every trick to make their children also enjoy it. But, whatever they try, the kids would rather play baseball. What does the parent do? They can make everyone miserable by continuing to force dust into every aspect of life. Or, they can learn to enjoy baseball. Fortunately, a very curious parent can easily learn to enjoy things that they normally wouldn’t enjoy.

Johnny555 9y ago

Her parents are both engineers, it's not hard to believe they are helping to guide her interests to STEM.

swendoog 9y ago

eh, no. What is far more likely than an 11 year old girl browsing MIT website? And 11 year old girl with parent(s) who were likely heavily, heavily involved. And the media loves a "look what this child did!" story, when in reality, their parents did the bulk of the work / study. edit: bring on the downvotes. this forum seems to really hate anyone who is slightly pessimistic / realistic. I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm just saying that the likelihood of an 11 year old organically doing something like this is very low, compared to say, her parents putting some strong wind in her sails.

Johnny555 9y ago
this forum seems to really hate anyone who is slightly pessimistic / realistic. I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm just saying that the likelihood of an 11 year old organically doing something like this is very low, compared to say, her parents putting some strong wind in her sails. My science fair project was heavily guided by two instructors. I doubt that any significant high school science fair project is done without any outside assistance at all. Getting help from experts in the field should be seen as a good thing, not a reason to dismiss the project. https://student.societyforscience.org/basics https://student.societyforscience.org/basics Creating an independent research project doesn’t mean you can’t ask for help. Parents, teachers, experts and other students may offer to help you on your project. Figuring out what kind of help is fair — and what type of help is not — can be tricky. Below are several stories from Science News for Kids that help offer guidance on that issue. Many students find a mentor to help them refine what questions to ask and how to answer them. Ideally, a mentor should never tell you what to do (even if you ask). Instead, a good mentor will help you find information that will inform your decisions on what to do and how to do it. For example, this story from Science News for Students gives examples of the proper roles played by mentors. This article discusses the advantages of working with a mentor. Meanwhile, we feature in this story the rewarding example of a young student who had the courage to contact an outside expert in the topic he was researching.
vacri 9y ago
So the head of a science department should be snubbed because they're supported by a team doing work for them? Since when did science become A Pursuit Of The Lone Hero?

Mz 9y ago

Former secular homeschooling parent. Sounds completely normal to me. --> "You have kids who don't do things like that? What planet are you from?"

rz2k 9y ago

Take a look at its news section: https://dmse.mit.edu/news https://dmse.mit.edu/news It looks interesting, and the articles are accessible to an intelligent 11 year-old without being written to appeal to that age group. It's easy to forget how stifling it is to be young and have so much of what you're given to read tainted by pedagogical writing style. Of course your reaction isn't unusual either. As people get older they learn not to talk about interests that are too specific until they know people well.

Fomite 9y ago

Kids are good at deep, intense fixation. For awhile, I was obsessed with aerogels, for reasons I still don't fully understand, and did occasionally stop by the local university library to read up on them.

pnathan 9y ago

Absolutely. Former homeschooled nerd. Having an intellectual interest and focus was normal in my household.

danso 9y ago

Yep, that was the kind of thing I did even on 28.8K modems. Minus the winning prizes part.

dominotw 9y ago

Indian parents in america are in mad rush to get their kids into top schools. They start "college prep" at 5 yr old ( eg: http://northsouth.org/public/main/home.aspx/ http://northsouth.org/public/main/home.aspx/), spelling bees, kumon ect .They know simply acing tests is not enough anymore. They know what other parents are also doing. Hard to get a leg up by simply studying more. I won't be surprised if we see more of the indian child prodigies in coming years when bulk of indian immigrants kids hit that age. http://www.extremetech.com/electronics/156361-teenage-girl-creates-tiny-device-that-could-charge-a-smartphone-in-20-seconds http://www.extremetech.com/electronics/156361-teenage-girl-c...

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
QAPereo 9y ago
I won’t be surprised if you see a rash of suicides...
- pizza 9y ago
  why would you be, that's already underway
  - QAPereo 9y ago
    I get the sense the poster I was replying to would be.
    - pizza 9y ago
      (fwiw i didn't downvote you, and upon reflection we're probably saying the same thing. peace)

L_Rahman 9y ago

It's difficult to imagine because there has been a not widely acknowledged rise over the last twenty years of incredibly well-resourced parents who spend all of their available time, energy and money on their children. Elite education (Ivies, Stanford, MIT, Chicago, Hopkins) historically was almost entirely the playground of the already rich. From the 70s onwards, it became a competitive game for the working upper middle class to send their children there. This elite stamp was necessary for their children to at least maintain working upper middle class status but ideally they'd collide with one of the already rich kinds and enter the wealth not labor class. As income inequality has grown, admission to these institutions have grown even more valuable and parents have dedicated even more resources to giving their children a shot. The result is that the children of well educated professionals end up in incredibly well resourced environments at home and in their schools. For context, the neighborhood this girl lives in has a median family income of 109,000 dollars, is 91% white and has only 2% of its population living below the poverty line.

MichaelMoser123 9y ago

I have looked up the site of this department - it looks very sparse , unless you can log in that is (it has a news section, to be fair). I guess one needs some fairy dust, sometimes.

cortexio 9y ago

All kids are retards. There are no exceptions. What kids do is either not impressive or they didn't do it themselfs. I know people want to believe there are exceptions. But nope. Kids are just kids, some are less retarded than others. Americans love these types of stories. Make her a transgender and they will love it even more. Maybe next year. Djeez,, people are so pathetic.

louprado 9y ago

Does anyone have a link to the article on the lead detector ? To comment on your question, my favorite past time as a child was walking the aisles of a hardware store or Radio Shack hoping to find a tool or device I had never seen before. If the store had a parts catalog, I would take it home and read every page. The girl in the article is doing the same only in a different format. It is bizarre that an activity one child finds so fascinating and gratifying is seen as painfully dull and pointless by another child.