
Teen's invention could charge your phone in 20 seconds - DiabloD3
http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/teens-invention-could-charge-your-phone-20-seconds-1C9977955
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gizmo686
After an absurd amount of google`ing (given how much PR crap there was on the
subject), I finnally found her project summary [1].

From what I understand of her description, she is not making a graphene
supercapacitor. Based on her description, her device significantly outperforms
other supercapacitors, and has comparable energy densities to classichal
batteries. Given that this summary is what she actually submitted to the
science fair, I doubt she would have won if it did not actually have merit to
it.

<rant>

Googling "Eesha Khare" took me to a bunch of crap articles saying only that
she won the Intel Science fair and would revolutionize batteries. Intel's
winner's page provided no additionaly details, and no link to her actual work.
Eventually, I was able to find my way to the list of winners, which was nice
enough to mention the title of her project. Googling the title finally got me
to the document listed.

Even using the title in Google, while it did bring up articles that were nice
enough to mention the name of her project, still did not bring up a single
article that bothered to even link to her work.

</rant>

[1]<http://www.usc.edu/CSSF//History/2013/Projects/S0912.pdf>

~~~
MichaelApproved
A good trick to searching when you're bombarded with articles regurgitating
the same information is to use the date tool. By asking Google to limit the
search date to before the regurgitation of articles started, you're more
likely to find quality sources for your search.

~~~
glomph
Ooh I didn't know that trick!

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haldujai
From my understanding she's a summer student at the Yat Li lab at UCSC.[1]

This concept is not newly developed by this young student[2][3], it seems that
she's just a summer student who used the labs work to submit to the Intel
competition, this is actually a very common practice for high school students.
As usual the media overstated her role, the work was not done in the 2.5
months she has off for the summer solely by her. That's not to say she might
not be bright, but it's not her genius that developed this concept, although
she may have contributed. In fact this work was first submitted for
publication in 2010[3], long before she joined the lab in 2012[4][5].

[1]<http://www.usc.edu/CSSF//History/2013/Projects/S0912.pdf> [credit:
gizmo686]

[2][http://research.pbsci.ucsc.edu/chemistry/li/publications/201...](http://research.pbsci.ucsc.edu/chemistry/li/publications/2012_NanoLett_12_1690-1696.pdf)

[3][http://research.pbsci.ucsc.edu/chemistry/li/publications/201...](http://research.pbsci.ucsc.edu/chemistry/li/publications/2011_NanoLett_11_3026-3033.pdf)

[4]<https://sites.google.com/site/yatliucsc/people>

[5]<http://www.ucolick.org/~raja/hs/LIST2011.txt>

Edit: Added reference showing she was not part of the Li lab in 2011. [5]

~~~
earh
Intel Science Fair does more harm than good, since when it was the
Westinghouse. It is one of the vestiges of privilege, where a bunch of rich
(and a few lucky) kids get to hang out in a research lab and then write up the
lab's work as their own, earning a branding of "genius" unavailable to the
less privileged class.

Why is it _harmful_ , you may ask? Because every smart kid who didn't get
handed a professional project to submit, and doesn't know the game, thinks
that he/she is so much less smart/hardworking/creative/accomplished than these
supposed geniuses, and is discouraged from continuing in science research.

Lab experience is great for kids, and we should be expanding that experience
to everyone, not using it as a tool to cement the position of the upper
classes.

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zafka
I read the article, and while it did not say how she made her "Invention" , it
sounds like a graphene based super capacitor. Here is one video about them:
[http://focusforwardfilms.com/contest/84/the-super-
supercapac...](http://focusforwardfilms.com/contest/84/the-super-
supercapacitor-brian-golden-davis)

There is lots of promise in this field, but I doubt that this young lady has
jumped out in front of the pack.

That being said, I would be delighted if she made me eat my words.

~~~
mosqutip
This is basically what I thought upon reading the article. I find it hard to
believe that a student, acting alone, would 'revolutionize' this industry,
considering the dedicated teams of engineers and scientists trying to achieve
this on a daily basis.

That being said, I would also like to eat my words here :)

~~~
scythe
Her invention is certainly probable and represents a significant achievement
-- extremely impressive for a high school student -- but it is not
"revolutionary." Her claimed specific energy is 20 Wh/kg, comparable to the
state-of-the-art in nanostructured supercapacitors (not always graphene!)
which a quick Google shows to be around 31 Wh/kg:

<http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/nl2023433>

So her supercapacitor is roughly on par with similar nanostructured
supercapacitors being developed. I must stress that the highest specific
energy does not always mean the best technology, but practical/fabrication
considerations can lead to different things making sense for different
applications, in particular you have to watch out for the nasty tendency of
some capacitors to short-circuit, which at supercapacitor energies means "
_kaboom!_ ".

That last bit is why expensive tantalum capacitors are often preferred over
cheaper fabrications with higher specific energy: tantalum is safe and
reliable, which matters a lot.

edit: I should also point out that _neither_ her supercapacitor nor other
current nanostructured supercapacitor electrodes achieves an energy density on
par with a cellphone battery. The specific energy of a lithium-ion polymer
battery used in cellphones is roughly 150-200 Wh/kg: nearly _ten times_ as
much as this girl's claim!

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StavrosK
Has anyone seen a "teen's invention" ever work?

~~~
grinich
When Gauss was a teenager, he put forward the theory for least squares. He
also published the 17-gon creation proof before he was 20.

~~~
StavrosK
So the last time it happened was in 1795? That's encouraging.

~~~
usea
You asked for a single example, not the most recent one.

~~~
StavrosK
Clearly, I meant "in recent memory, preferably on Hacker News", not "was the
inventor of the wheel younger than twenty?".

~~~
lhl
A _slightly_ more recent invention that I recall would be Jack Andraka's
pancreatic cancer testing. Via Wikipedia[1]:

"Andraka's sensor costs $0.03 (to compare to a $800 cost of a standard
test[10]) and 10 tests can be performed per strip, taking 5 minutes each. The
method is 168 times faster, 26,667 times less expensive, and 400 times more
sensitive than ELISA, and 25% to 50% more accurate than the CA19-9 test"

Discussion on Hacker News from last year:
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4265830>

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Andraka>

~~~
StavrosK
That's a much better example, thanks. Still, I wouldn't place the odds very in
the title's favor, but at least there are counterexamples...

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frob
On a complete side note: did anyone else notice that the page changed urls as
your scrolled to new articles. However, the page didn't reload. It was
interesting, but it broke my browser's back functionality. Since I scrolled
down and back up, my browser had ~10 pages in its history before I got back to
HN.

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twiceaday
Can an expert comment as to why this is too good to be true?

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lutze
Not an expert, but from what I understand it's a trade off. Super-capacitors
hold much less charge than batteries.

There was a very interesting article about them on HN last year IIRC.

~~~
zorlem
Maybe this one: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3723943> , but I'm still
unclear if OP invention or break-through is for the same technology.

