Heman Bekele was inspired by Ethiopian workers laboring under the sun, and wanted to help ‘as many people as possible’
A middle-school teen has been named “America’s top young scientist” after developing a bar of soap that could be useful in the treatment of melanoma, a skin cancer that is diagnosed in about 100,000 people in the US each year and kills approximately 8,000.
Does it actually work?
Looks like it does from another article:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/10/25/heman-bekele-skin-cancer-soap/
Whenever you read “X-year old does something”, it’s usually already been done or a slight modification of something already been done.
Don’t underestimate our ability to miss the obvious. You’re talking about the race that over 3000 or so years, forgot scurvy was cured by vitamin C over 10 times.
They also used to shape steel wire by pulling it really hard through a kinda steel funnel. This works because the tensile strength of steel is much higher than its yield strength, so you can pull on it with more force than it takes to shape it, without it snapping.
Back in the day, we figured out corrosion helped make the steel slippery when it went through the shaping tool. We though it was because some dudes pissed on the steel, so for a while after people pissed on their steel. Until people started figuring out beer worked just as well, and then half beer half water.
Until they finally realized water worked just as well to create corrosion. It took a couple hundred years.
Sometimes it just takes someone to think about it and do it. At 14 that’s incredible, kids aren’t that selfless at that age.
It’s incredible to have the opportunity to mentor with a senior research analyst at 3M.
Wish more kids were given this kind of opportunity without going six figures into debt