Three high school students from Taipei City are among the 20 global finalists of 2015 Google Science Fair, underscoring Taiwan’s burgeoning international reputation as a clever country.
Hsu Yo, 14, of Ta Ren Girls’ High School and Wang Jing-tong, 13, of Taipei Municipal Dazhi High School advanced on the strength of a sound-based system for identifying bottles containing potentially adulterated liquids.
“We discovered that distinctive sounds emanate from glass vessels when tapped,” Hsu said. “After the unique data characteristics are analyzed on PC-installed software, it is possible to identify potentially problematic contents such as gasoline and wine.”
Chen Wei-tung, 16, of Taipei Municipal Jianguo High School made the list for his magnetic positioning sphere—a single-source 3-D positioning system using rotating magnetic fields.
“Repeated observations show that the MPS system’s positioning accuracy and stability meet the requirements of mobile systems and wearable devices,” he said, adding that it can be set up in seconds, thus saving time and money on installation.
Chen’s device has already earned him a First Award in Embedded Systems at the Intel International Science and Engineer Fair three months ago in Pittsburgh. He also made the top-90 list at last year’s Google competition.
The trio, who will present their projects for review at Google HQ next month, are competing with the 17 other finalists for nine awards, including a US$50,000 scholarship grand prize.
Staged by Google Inc. since 2011, the science and technology competition is open to entrants aged 13-18. This year’s award presentation ceremony is scheduled for Sept. 21 in Mountain View, California. (SFC-JSM)
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