Ten Year Old Girl Discovers New Molecule

I love this. Further proof that age, gender, and education are not limiting factors to making significant contributions to science:

When Kenneth Boehr instructed his fifth grade class at Border Star Montessori School in Kansas City, Mo. to build molecules with modeling kits, he didn’t expect one of his students to make a scientific discovery.  But that’s what happened when Clara Lazen, 10, randomly arranged a unique combination of oxygen, nitrogen and carbon atoms. The result was a molecule that Boehr had never seen before

According to a Chemistry professor the molecule has the potential to store energy and has the same combinations of atoms as nitroglycerin. Therefore, it may have the potential to lead to a new form of energy storage or to be incredibly destructive.

You may wonder, as I did, if Clara's paper gets published, would that make her the youngest published scientist? Sadly (or happily) the answer is no. That distinction belongs to Emily Rosa who thought up and conducted her own research study on touch therapy and had it published in the Journal of the American Medical Association at the ripe old age of nine.

Ed

Ed enjoys all forms of entertainment and has an unnatural love for quantitative methodology. He operates out of a basement in Northern Virginia (@edomaniac).

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