2004-5-19
This is Steve Ember with the VOA Special English Education
Report.
High school students from more than forty countries gathered last
week in the American Northwest. They took part in the
two-thousand-four Intel International Science and Engineering Fair.
They competed for more than three-million dollars in awards and
money for college.
We told you last week about five high school teachers honored for
their excellence in teaching mathematics and science. They won money
and a trip to the science and engineering fair held last week in
Portland, Oregon. Now, meet a few of the students honored for the
projects they presented there.
The top winners are from the United States, Germany and China.
They were named Intel Young Scientists. Each received a high
performance computer and fifty-thousand dollars for college.
One of the winners is
seventeen-year-old Sarah Rose Langberg of Fort Myers, Florida. She
won a top prize for her project in Earth and space sciences. She
investigated the southern Juan de Fuca Ridge in the Pacific Ocean.
This is one of the most active volcanic areas on Earth. She studied
video images from the ocean floor and did other research in an
effort to explain details of this area.
Eighteen-year-old Uwe Treske of Grafenhainichen Germany, won for
his physics project. He used common materials to develop a low-cost
version of a powerful device called a scanning tunneling microscope.
The third top winner is nineteen-year-old Zhu Yuanchen of
Shanghai. His computer science project involved computer graphics.
He developed a way to produce high-quality images with clearer
detail in less time.
More than
one-thousand-three-hundred students competed in the Intel
International Science and Engineering Fair. Intel calls it "the
world's largest pre-college celebration of science." The computer
technology company in the United States has held the fair since
nineteen-ninety-seven. But a non-profit organization called Science
Service has administered the event for the past fifty-five years.
You can learn more information about Science Service and the fair
through the Internet. The Web site is sciserv.org. Again, the
address is sciserv.org.
This VOA Special English Education Report was written by Nancy
Steinbach. This is Steve Ember.