11-year-old girl inspired by Flint water crisis creates cheap kit to test lead

Hmm. Of her device, the article says:

The result is Tethys, a sensor-based device designed to detect lead in water faster than other techniques currently on the market.

So have you considered the possibility that her device works differently (and perhaps better) than yours? You seem to be basically knocking her innovation, based on the fact that you once used a device that was "similar" in some way.

There are test strips for lead testing water, but they're unreliable, unregulated, and not particularly trustworthy. The only great option right now is to call a lab who does water testing and work with them to send in a sample and have it tested via a method like induced plasma mass spectrometry.

Unfortunately many of these labs aren't interested in working with individuals who will only send one or two samples. They prefer to work with companies that will send them hundreds of thousands of samples. Even if you found one willing to work with you, their business processes involve fax machines, invoices, and talking to sales people on the phone.

(Related: That's why I started a company called http://www.testyourwaterforlead.com. We started a company and partnered with a lab, we let you order online, pay with a credit card, and we deal with the lab to help you avoid the hassle.)

How does covering an 11-year-old's accomplishments set them up for failure?

It can be upsetting to read these things if one feels that they'd have thrived in such a supportive environment, but instead only had indifferent teachers/a school with little budget/etc and had to do without such support. But it's not a reason to doubt the veracity of any of it, or hate on the kids; these kids are sharp and hardworking and doing their best, they just happen to also be much more privileged than average.

It takes a child of remarkable interests and aptitude to win a national competition, of course. That's why you're reading about her specifically. It also takes unusually supportive parents. A sizable minority of American families with children could afford a home lab, equipment, and supplies if a child were so inclined and the parents encouraged it, but I suspect it's rarer for parents to OK funding it than other costly-but-more-common extracurricular activities or adult hobbies. Half of the battle is just having parents who understand you well enough to support what you want to do.

--> "You have kids who don't do things like that? What planet are you from?"

It looks interesting, and the articles are accessible to an intelligent 11 year-old without being written to appeal to that age group. It's easy to forget how stifling it is to be young and have so much of what you're given to read tainted by pedagogical writing style.

Of course your reaction isn't unusual either. As people get older they learn not to talk about interests that are too specific until they know people well.

I won't be surprised if we see more of the indian child prodigies in coming years when bulk of indian immigrants kids hit that age.

http://www.extremetech.com/electronics/156361-teenage-girl-c...

Elite education (Ivies, Stanford, MIT, Chicago, Hopkins) historically was almost entirely the playground of the already rich. From the 70s onwards, it became a competitive game for the working upper middle class to send their children there. This elite stamp was necessary for their children to at least maintain working upper middle class status but ideally they'd collide with one of the already rich kinds and enter the wealth not labor class.

As income inequality has grown, admission to these institutions have grown even more valuable and parents have dedicated even more resources to giving their children a shot.

The result is that the children of well educated professionals end up in incredibly well resourced environments at home and in their schools. For context, the neighborhood this girl lives in has a median family income of 109,000 dollars, is 91% white and has only 2% of its population living below the poverty line.

To comment on your question, my favorite past time as a child was walking the aisles of a hardware store or Radio Shack hoping to find a tool or device I had never seen before. If the store had a parts catalog, I would take it home and read every page. The girl in the article is doing the same only in a different format.

It is bizarre that an activity one child finds so fascinating and gratifying is seen as painfully dull and pointless by another child.

Why they implemented it this way? Beats me.

I'm guessing lots of people have it as their default homepage from the old days so they keep it running.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go.com