A step towards big science
The Minor Academy of Sciences presents top-100 children’s inventions
Yesterday an exhibit of school students’ inventions and projects opened at the Kyiv Palace of Children and Youth. The exhibit, titled “The Future of Ukraine,” represents 21 regions of Ukraine. Overall, it includes 100 projects by senior middle and high school students, as well as by vocational school, college, and university students. Experts remark that over the past year the level and quality of student projects has considerably increased. Little wonder, since this year the Minor Academy made a breakthrough into Europe, sending top 20 children’s projects to exhibits of children’s inventions in Geneva and Paris. Ukrainian inventors caught the eye of foreign counterparts, so there is a prospect of cooperation.
Also, recently the Minor Academy of Sciences and the National University “Kyiv Polytechnic Institute” launched a joint project with preschool educational establishments in Kyiv and Kirovohrad (with children aged 3, 4, and more). They can even boast of some results already: past year they held an exhibit of children’s inventions in this age group.
Each project, presented at the Palace of Children and Youth, has a scientific and experimental foundation, contains the researchers’ own original results, and references to sources. The presented projects have already been approved at the raion and oblast levels. The young inventors are working together with the laboratories of Ukrainian universities and academic and research institutes.
“We have a very serious jury selecting the best projects, which are awarded prizes (1,000 hryvnias). Besides, the Minor Academy of Sciences has a center for promoting intellectual property and a copyright center. We help the children to obtain materials for the certificate of authorship and patent their inventions. Each year such certificates are issued to 30 or 40 children,” says Stanislav Dovhy, president of the Minor Academy of Sciences. “Overall 100 percent of these children go to university and continue their research as their course or graduation projects. Then they choose a career in research. Besides, every year we hold an auction of ideas, with various interested organizations taking part in it. They examine our materials, and invite children to cooperate with them. Here is an example: Fadila Blali, a graduate student of the gymnasium Dominanta, patented an innovative material which can be used to treat fractures: it heals broken bones, and is ecologically clean.
“Also, children are now very active in creating programs and applications for class work. Many of these have already been implemented in their own schools. For instance, Halyna Fedorenko, a 9th-grade student from Bila Tserkva, developed an interactive program Pryhody domovychka Kuzi (The Adventures of Kuzia the Brownie, based on a popular children’s animation). The program helps children master the three R’s (reading, writing, and arithmetic) and singing.”
Inventor Halyna Fedorenko told The Day that she got the inspiration for creating the program from her mother, primary school teacher, who often said that children were reluctant to learn new things. Thus, the program, first of all had to be interesting for children.
“The first and second graders only begin to delve in computer programs and they like to work with computer either with the help of an adult or on their own. Then we began to consider the content of the program trying to shape the idea of what we wanted to teach children. We decided that we should develop creativity and teach them to think and analyze in the first place. I have come up with a lot of topics for studying and am now developing working material in various areas (logic, language learning, and art). The main thing is to develop creative thinking in children. With this program you can learn both in groups and individually, depending on the technical capability,” said Fedorenko.
Attention of the public was also drawn to the exoskeleton MARC created by Anton Holovchenko, first year student at the National Aviation University. The author of the construction noted that with this skeleton “one can kill any malfunction of human body.” It can help make paralyzed limbs move again (the invention has passed testing on patients in Okhmatdyt Clinic for Children). The main idea of the invention is that there are servo motors (or neurosensors) responsible for certain functions of the human body embedded in a “skeleton,” worn by the paralyzed person. For example, there are sensors that are responsible for movement of the limbs. If the patient activates these servo motors he will be able to move his paralyzed arm.
The jury distinguished projects in alternative energy, in the robotics (children “invented” environmental robots that can operate in conditions of radioactive contamination and in complicated underground work). There were several projects presented in alternative forms of resource preservation, one of which was previously presented in Paris (system of solar panels management). Young winners received patents for their inventions from the president of the Minor Academy of Sciences and presents from the sponsors, who promised to reward the winners with trips abroad in the future.
