{"id":1042,"date":"2016-10-06T15:38:31","date_gmt":"2016-10-06T15:38:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.enpress.com\/site\/?p=1042"},"modified":"2018-04-27T20:50:50","modified_gmt":"2018-04-27T20:50:50","slug":"ohio-students-transform-foam-trash-into-water-filters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.enpress.com\/site\/ohio-students-transform-foam-trash-into-water-filters\/","title":{"rendered":"Ohio Students Devise a Way to Transform Foam Trash into Water Filters"},"content":{"rendered":"

At this year’s Google Science Fair<\/a>, an online science competition for students ages 13-18 from around the world, one of the top prize winners was directly related to a topic near and dear to our hearts: water filtration.<\/p>\n

The team of\u00a0Julia Bray, Luke Clay and Ashton Coffer, all 14 year olds from Columbus, Ohio, took home the Scientific American Innovator Award<\/a> for their idea to turn a challenging trash item, Styrofoam, into a means of filtering impurities from water.<\/p>\n

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Using Ingenuity to Solve a Difficult Problem<\/h3>\n

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In the U.S. alone, 1.9 billion pounds of Styrofoam (the brand name of expanded polystyrene<\/em>) are thrown away each year. Polystyrene waste takes up a quarter of U.S. landfill space and can take hundreds of years to degrade.<\/p>\n

Using their scientific minds, these innovative youngsters found that expanded polystyrene consists of over 90% carbon. Since carbon is used in water filters, they wondered if it would be possible (and cost-effective) to produce a carbon filter from\u00a0polystyrene waste. After hours of work and experimentation, they found out it was!<\/p>\n

This is an idea that could reduce a significant amount of waste in our landfills, and help provide people with affordable access to clean water. As winners of\u00a0Scientific American Innovator Award, Julia, Luke and Ashton received a $15,000 prize.<\/p>\n

Learn more about their Styro-Filter project here<\/a>. Also check out this Google Science Fair video summarizing their awesome innovation…<\/em><\/p>\n