Taiwanese students collected 14 awards at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (Intel ISEF) in Phoenix, Arizona, on Saturday last week, the best performance ever by Taiwan in the world’s largest pre-college science competition.
The most outstanding Taiwanese competitor was 17-year-old Chang Pei-hsuan (張霈萱) from Taipei Municipal LiShan High School, who won four awards.
Chang submitted a project titled “Nested Eggs: Where Brianchon, Pascal and Poncelet Meet,” which made new discoveries about the nature of the double heart hexagon by stringing together the theorems of French mathematicians Blaise Pascal, Charles Julien Brianchon and Jean-Victor Poncelet.
Chang won the Intel ISEF Best of Category Award and the First Award in the mathematics category, as well as the Third Award of the American Mathematical Society’s special awards, according to the list of winners announced by the Society for Science and the Public.
She was also one of three contestants who won a trip to the EU Contest for Young Scientists. Chang received US$13,500 in prize money for the awards.
Lin Bo-han (林柏翰), 17, from Taipei Fuhsing Private School, won the Second Award in the physics and astronomy category for his project that uses ultrasonic vibrations to inject nitrogen into fluids in order to create nanobubbles.
Lin Cheng-pei (林承霈), 17, from Taipei First Girls High School, grabbed the Third Award in chemistry for her project on UV-light sensitive transparent organic solar cells.
She also won the top place in the special awards category presented by SPIE (the International Society for Optics and Photonics), as well as a certificate of honorable mention handed out by the American Chemical Society.
Meanwhile, 18-year-olds Chen Yu-hung (陳昱宏) and Chen Shih-hao (陳世豪), from the Affiliated Senior High School of National Taiwan Normal University, nabbed the Third Award in the earth and environmental sciences category, and the First Award of the American Meteorological Society’s special awards.
The pair was awarded for their project that used miso soup and meteorological data to simulate the formation process of two kinds of cellular clouds.
Anin Luo (羅亦甯), 17, and Chu Tsan-mei (朱讚美), 18, from Taipei First Girls High School, won the Third Award in the biomedical and health sciences category with their project that focuses on the inhibitory effects of omega-3 fatty acids-based fish oil on cholangiocarcinoma.
Taiwanese also won the Fourth Award in the categories of animal sciences, biochemistry and engineering mechanics.
More than 1,700 participants from 77 nations competed in the fair this year.
This year, nine works by 13 students were selected to represent Taiwan at the fair, the National Taiwan Science Education Center said.
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