Young people are very concerned about the changing climate and the warming of the planet.
An overwhelming number of young people feel anxious, angry and powerless about climate change, according to a landmark study published in the Lancet.
Yet optimism and creativity are generated by our youth.
Take, for example, a solution developed by a young South Bay girl for filtering water. Clean drinking water is essential for life, but climate change is worsening water supplies by increasing the risk of severe drought.
Thermo Fisher Scientific
“Basically, two billion people don’t have access to clean drinking water. And that’s what inspired my project: finding an almost free way to filter water,” noted San Jose high school student Tina Jin.
Jin is only 13 years old, but the high school student is wise beyond her years. She met CBS News Bay Area at the Cupertino Public Library and was accompanied by her mother Mary.
“This is my wonderful, wonderful mother. She is the best cook on the planet and also very supportive and very kind,” the student said enthusiastically, with her arm around her smiling mother.
Ms. Jin recently traveled with her daughter to Washington, DC, where the young student competed in the nation’s premier science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, competition.
It is known as the Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovative Challenge. Each year the competition attracts approximately 65,000 high school students. Tina Jin was one of the 30 finalists.
“I wanted to find a way to use natural materials as material for a water filter,” she explained.
Jin noticed that animal bones have many small holes that resemble a commercial water filter. The honeycomb structure makes the bones porous. That gave her an idea. But first she needed a supply of bones to see if they could filter dirty water.
She thought about something her mother always said when she bought meat.
“I remember my mother always complaining that there is probably more bone than meat in one pound of meat,” Tina laughed.
After family meals, the student began collecting animal bones that would otherwise have been thrown away. She started using them in her research and experimenting with them to see if they could filter dirty water.
Initially, she noticed that only some of the animals’ bones were working. That’s why she decided to make the structures in the bones more accessible by grinding them up.
She ground the bones and strained the dirty water through a portable filter made from discarded bones and readily available household supplies. An independent third-party expert verified that Tina’s filter worked.
“By grinding the animal bones, you can use all parts of the bone, and by grinding the animal bones into powder, my filter could work successfully,” Jin said.
The young student’s work so impressed the judges that she won the top prize known as the ASCEND (Aspiring Scientists Cultivating Exciting New Discoveries) Award, which carries a $25,000 prize.
CBS News Bay Area asked her mother what she thought, and the student translated it for her mother.
“My mother said she was so excited. She was speechless,” Jin smiled.
The student plans to save the money for college and applies for a patent. She also believes that – despite the rapid warming of the planet due to climate change – there is still hope.
“No one can do everything, but everyone can do something,” she said.
Her water filter for animal bones is a “butter-proof” success.
Reed Cowan
