From Israel to New York: Top Sci-Tech Students Share Inventions
By Valentina Cordero
For a day Union Square was transformed into a street lab organized by Israel Sci-Tech Schools, the largest non-governmental school system in Israel. Top high-school students from Israel demonstrated their experiments and high-tech inventions in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM.) Among those who attended the event were Ido Aharoni, Consul General of Israel in New York, who commended the students on their outstanding work. “The creativity and ingenuity exemplified by these students is an inspiration to us all. The Israeli Sci-Tech program has been adapted to many schools in the United States,” stated Aharoni.
“We decided to start with this program because of the crisis in science,” said Joel Rothschild, director of Moshinsky & R&D Center Administration, underlining that “no kids want to study science and therefore we want to find a way to promote engineering, giving them a big motivation. The kids want to be creative. We need to find a new education program that motivates students, because in engineering and science almost nothing is impossible”.
For each of the students this experience represents an important step in their future career. “My dream is to became a doctor, but studying science and being part of this event is amazing,” said Sapir Cohen, age 17. She developed a special application for Smartphone that is able to scan food for allergens like milk. “I am allergic to milk so I wanted to develop something in order to help other people like me,” she said.
All the inventions were very surprising, such as a computer program able to summarize pages of text not only online but also handwritten. “We are students and we will need this kind of application,” said Noam Gafter, age 17, who created this project with Arie Pavlov, age 18, and Mark Vaykhansky, age 17. Some of the invention needed more than one year to be realized, like the device to prevent teen drunk driving that allows parents to block the engine. According to Yehuda Negosi, age 17, “is a great invention especially for parents because they can see the test's result from the breathalyzer and they can decide if the son or daughter can start the engine”.
Another curious invention was a recycling basket. Hen Assur, age 18, explained that “in order to inspire kids and educate them we decided to create a sort of game for recycling”. In fact, like a basketball game, children have to throw the bottle inside the basket where there are many sensors that give points like in a game.
All these young students are an important example of what young people are capable of in technology and science, creating new devices that can be significant in our everyday life. #
