Teen invents a system to keep germs from spreading on airplanes | Hacker News Reader

Teen invents a system to keep germs from spreading on airplanes

washingtonpost.com

127 pointsbeyti96 comments

This invention is awesome.

I can't believe all the negativity in this thread for something created by a 17-year-old. So what if the technical complexity of this project isn't the super high? It's a novel approach to a real problem, he did the research to show that in theory it can be effective, and it seems reasonable practical.

Beyond serious diseases, it seems very common to get a cold/cough/flu after flying. This is just anecdotal experience, but it sure seems like 100 people sharing the same 5000 cubic feet of air for 4 hours is the perfect storm for airborne contagions.

CDC, please build on Raymond's work and get it rolled into production.

So what if the technical complexity of this project isn't the super high?

I would even go the other way, the low complexity of the solution makes it all that more amazing. The kid ran his own studies and created a very simple solution that requires almost no effort to implement and yet should be hugely effective. That's the hallmark of great engineering, and what I strive for every day.

Right, also less complex solutions are often the most reliable, less points of failure or things that can go wrong.

Good ideas dont have to be complex. What would we do without a wheel :-)

We'd be forced to finally use flying cars :)

Would cars exist in the first place, when there were no wheels.

Of course not. Flying cars, however, obviously would since we would need some means of transportation.

> he did the research to show that in theory it can be effective, and it seems reasonable practical

Close, but no cigar. Do you have any idea at what speed the saliva particles are flying during a sneeze? There's no "wall of air" made by patented nozzle covers that can possibly stop them in the economy class of any commercial airplane.

Let's show the guy some respect and stop patting him on the head for something of low quality and no value.

> Do you have any idea at what speed the saliva particles are flying during a sneeze?

About 40mph. Why can't a droplet of moisture travelling at that speed be deflected by air?

I can see both sides of this. Raymond is obviously an outstanding individual, especially when you consider some of the other things he's done: http://plancanada.ca/page.aspx?pid=6613

On the other hand I'm not convinced of the novelty of the use of fins to direct the flow of conditioned air, and I can assure you that there are multiple companies whose entire business is making better air filtration and circulation systems for aircraft, so I'm fairly unimpressed by the article's assertion that few people are working on it (few people in the industry are working on it relative to problems such as safety and propulsion, but I'm not entirely convinced that's a bad thing either)

This week one of my kids has an egg drop experiment at school. I could tell him we should use the same design we used successfully for his older brother a few years ago and we'd be done in fifteen minutes flat. Or I could tell him I am an engineer and I know what the optimal solutions we'll be. No need to waste any time.

Or, One could do as I did which is to take him through a journey of exploration and imagination that had him building all sorts of crazy contraptions. Most of them failed. We discussed why and how and iterated. What's missing from this thread is that, yes, this kid needs to get nothing but praise whether this was a real solution or not. How else are you going to inspire young minds to develop love for science and engineering?

Many years ago my father used that teaching moment differently. I had tried all kinds of elaborate solutions (I was partial to parachutes). My father asked me, who does this for a living, and what can you learn from them.

Half an hour later I had an answer and built my device. My classmates and even teacher all looked at me with pity, for it was clear my device would fail spectacularly.

For flair I threw it another ten feet up (from the top of the bleachers). It made a sickening thump when it landed, and many grimaces were shared- but both the device & egg were unscathed.

I think there's value in both approaches, depending on what the kid lacks.

The goal should be prevention instead of control. I work in infection prevention and control so can shed some light on this.

The two major diseases people on planes should be worried about are measles and chickenpox. Both of which have excellent vaccines to prevent illness.

TB is airborne but not highly transmissible, for example, the public health department where I live will only conduct exposure follow up for TB patients that were on a plane for longer than 7 hours, and only start with 2 rows in front, and 2 rows behind. Only if those passengers seroconvert for TB will they test the rest of the plane.

Things like SARS/MERS-CoV are also a concern, but the control should be to prevent these people from getting on the plane in the first place (temperature monitoring).

Influenza and other respiratory viruses are a concern, but these are spread through larger droplets and therefore only really concern those directly next to you (likely family members) and you are just as likely to pick it up in the airport lounge than on the plane.

Cool invention, but just a minor cog in the chain of infection.

> The two major diseases people on planes should be worried about are measles and chickenpox. Both of which have excellent vaccines to prevent illness.

Unless you're too young or sick to get the vaccine, or the vaccine is ineffective.

I just flew on an 11 hour flight with my 4 month old, and my biggest concern was measles since she can't be vaccinated yet.

Correct, but she would be protected if all the other adults were vaccinated. We did a very good job over the past 60 years of almost eradicating measles and it's only be recently that cases have appeared in groups of anti-vaxxers and spreading to those too young to get the shot.

That's unfortunately not a good assumption to make.

Technically it would have been a good assumption up until recently. Now parents need to consider whether they would like to fly with a child. I recommend they use readily available data to determine if the risk is elevated due to the city they are flying into or out of.

If I ruled the world: "Oh you don't trust technology and aren't vaccinated? Fine, don't get in that metal tube and fly at 500 miles per hour."

Christ. Then technically it's not a good assumption today.

What? 10 years ago when measles was only affecting very tiny populations, your risk of getting on a plane with one of these people was near 0. Now with the outbreaks in California (and many other places around the world), the chances are getting higher and higher. Therefore decision making will have changed.

No shit. That's what I meant. You got pedantic about unrelated details about the past.

Sorry I'm not following... what are the unrelated details about the past?

The situation with chickenpox is actually quite complicated. The vaccine is not routinely offered in the UK.

They say something interesting, which is that adults get a boost to their immunity whenever they are exposed to the virus (as most parents are).

If children were vaccinated, then adults who had had chickenpox would not receive this boosting effect and it could cause a higher incidence of shingles in the adult population.

Because chickenpox is mostly harmless in childhood, they reason that it's better to just hope that as many children as possible catch it, and vaccinate the adolescents that don't.

http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/vaccinations/Pages/chickenpox-v...

There is a shingles vaccine now though. Basically a booster.

To that I would add that if you improve control slightly but the average number of people an infected person infects remains more than 1, the disease will continue to spread exponentially. And beyond that threshold, the relationship between how well it spreads and the course of the epidemic is chaotic.

The example that I like to use is that if you are good about washing your hands, your odds of not catching a seasonal flu improve. But if everyone is good about washing their hands, then the flu spreads slower, there are sick people around you longer, and your odds of catching it might or might not wind up better.

You might be right. but most inventions are minor anyway.innovations is a cumulative business.

Do you think that this will be implemented ?

Likely not, airlines margins are razor thin and when there are cases of measles on a plane for example, they simply hand over their flight passenger list to public health and they do all the work. By implementing this system, it won't save them any money.

The only time I could see this being beneficial for the airlines is if there were another SARS scare and people were not booking trips out of X city due to fears of catching SARS from someone on the plane. I think recent ebola situation in West Africa has really improved our systems at airports and therefore would likely try to restrict sick passengers from getting on planes, rather than control their illness once onboard.

I think if they market it right, it will get them the business of neurotic people for relatively low cost.

Agree with you, but defense in depth.

Sure - but I'd rather take the risk than pay the "Safe Air Plane Tax" of $0.75 per flight.

Quote by the teen who won the competition: "Basically a lot of this work is master's or PhD-level research."

I believe it! Which makes me think ...

We spend a lot of time giving high-school students a general, liberal arts education, but I think there's room in secondary education, at least for highly motivated students, to drill deeply into one particular domain.

You've probably seen mattmight's famous "Illustrated guide to a Ph.D.": http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/

I wondering if we shouldn't do more to encourage self-driven learners to extend that tentacle out earlier than we currently do.

> We spend a lot of time giving high-school students a general, liberal arts education, but I think there's room in secondary education, at least for highly motivated students, to drill deeply into one particular domain.

I don't know if I agree, I think it's very important to have a well rounded education by the time you come out of high school. I, for one, am very grateful to have been exposed to philosophy, literature (in more than one language), art. All stuff that I probably would not have chosen for myself. You have all of your life to specialize in a domain, what's the rush?

Why is it important to be well rounded?

Makes it easier to roll.

It isn't that there is intrinsic value in the various other subjects themselves, the value comes from having a shared core of knowledge / experience that can be used when interacting with others. Just two examples from recent conversations -- once I used an example that had a comparison to a canary in a coal mine. Several people in the group never heard of that phrase, so I had to explain what it meant. Another time I used the expression "Tilting at Windmills", and again that was lost on some people.

So yes, it is important to be well rounded, just to have common base for general conversations.

But surely, if the only need is common core of shared knowledge - and since most people forget most of what they learned in school - maybe just teaching a highly condensed form of this knowledge, in a highly memorable fashion would be better ?

I haven't chosen a side here, but it seems like one could just as easily ask "You have all of your life to be educated in philosophy, literature, and art, what's the rush?"

I'd grant literature and the arts, but philosophy is something that (to me) seems to be important to learn early on. Both in the sense of knowledge of different schools of philosophy, but also in the sort of thinking required to develop and understand philosophical thoughts in general.

I'll put that in the same camp as history and political science. The importance, in my view, is on understanding the world at large and (direct/indirect democracy-centric) being able to vote based on actual thought out reasoning instead of the sort of fear based and reactionary voting we often see.

Even studying specific schools of philosophy or periods of history in detail can likely be postponed. But a lack of even basic familiarity leaves people sufficiently uninformed and misguided that you end up with folks like my coworker who'd gladly hand all encryption keys to the US gov't in exchange for a (possibly) more secure future.

>> "Basically a lot of this work is master's or PhD-level research."

Without taking out from this big accomplishment, there's no way for this to be true. In general, when they teach simulation to university students , they tell them to use all the math/physics they've learn to validate their simulation model(to avoid the known garbage-in garbage-out problem - GIGO).

I'm sure he didn't learn all those tools just to validate the simulation - it takes a really long time to acquire them, and it's really hard.

So he probably used conceptual understanding of fluid dynamics +learning the simulation tool + a bit of guessing/forums to build his simulation model in order to design his invention.

And maybe ,educationally that's a good way to go ? maybe we should ,at high school, teach people the conceptual skills, and the use of simulation tools(the higher level simulation tools they find useful) and let them play ? could generate lots of excitement for the sciences and probably good ideas.

Same goes for creating easier simulation tools.

Agreed. Using the tools is a very different thing from knowing why they work.

Additionally, I wonder how easily this can be adapted to other planes besides the 747. How much does it rely on cabin width/length?

Isn't that usually one of the focuses of Magnet Schools [1] in the US? My sister went to one which focused on Math/Science and I went to one which was billed as "Technology" based but ended up being... not so technology based.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnet_school

I think there's room in secondary education, at least for highly motivated students, to drill deeply into one particular domain.

They can and do. It's called independent study, though I don't have any idea how many highschools offer the option.

Unless you mean suspending gen-ed requirements to do this. In which case, it sounds like a recipe for graduating students with holes in their education for what benefit? So they can have a chance at being a 1-in-X success story at 18 instead of 22?

Using existing air systems for these seems like a nice hack. It's something that's easily implemented, though I fail to see airlines implement it any time soon. There's no financial benefit to them for this. Someone having a cold will hardly stop them from buying a plane ticket.

Keeping staff healthy would reduce the number of sick employees at any given time. There is no way this will actually be as cheap as $1k per plane, but almost any smallish one time cost will eventually pay for itself if you can meaningfully improve worker health.

If it is a cold. Just wait for the next pandemic scare.

There might be. I bet flight attendants take more sick days than most workers do and there are very real financial implications of a flight being delayed due to lack of staff.

>I bet flight attendants take more sick days than most workers do

I'll take your hypothetical bet with my own speculation to the contrary: I imagine most flight attendants are in better physical shape than, say, your typical office worker due to the nature of their job, as well as being more on top of preventative health measures (vaccines and such) precisely because they know they're at higher risk due to the number of people they're exposed to.

Very good point. Hard to know who is right without data, which I can't imagine we'll find. I know for a fact that if I were a flight attendant, I'd certainly make sure I had the latest flu vaccine, etc.

I suspect it also works like it does with primary school teachers. They have immune systems made of iron, in part because of selection but also because they're exposed to so much every day.

Their significant others on the other hand, they're sick as hell all the time...

I avoid flying because I always end up ill afterwards. There is a cost to airlines of doing nothing.

I fly frequently and I always get sick, even though I'm fairly religious with hand sanitizer and what not. I'm not sure what I do wrong.

Maybe it's not just because you are more exposed to germs on the plane. One possibility is that air on planes is quite dry, and you are not drinking enough, which would stress your system. Or there can be a combination of conditions that get you sick.

Or the airport bathrooms. Which are more often than not kind of filthy and do not have a process for washing and drying your hands w/ paper towels that is completely touch-free.

>do not have a process for washing and drying your hands w/ paper towels that is completely touch-free

This is different from my personal experiences. In the last few years, I've dried my hands with a touch-free system in the vast majority of airport bathrooms I've used. I've found airport bathrooms to be touch-free at a much higher rate than public restrooms in general.

Also, the first airline to do this will get great PR, for very little cost.

I know I would pick an airline that installs this.

That may have less to do with airborne illness and more to do with dry air, reduced air pressure, and consequent irritation.

Maybe there's a segment of the population which will prefer to fly in healthier planes ?

Unless this system is perfectly tuned, it is going to strip a belt of warm air around people and they'll get cold.

Even when air is warm, breeze can make you uncomfortable, and in-flight air is often cool on its own.

Net result might be more people becoming sick, not fewer.

Boeing has made steady improvements in passenger comfort, and that includes increasing cabin pressure and better air circulation. They've also made a lot of improvements in reducing cabin noise and vibration. Also, the ride is a lot smoother these days.

It's not clear to me whether this solution is stable. The air flow looks very turbulent. Maybe if the air vents are blowing at a slightly different speed or if you have a few empty seats, the dynamics change a lot and you go back to a chaotic circulation pattern. Also, most airplanes have individual vents as well that can be adjusted... how would those affect the flow?

I'm have a Masters in Aeroacoustics (acoustics + fluid dynamics) and work mostly on numerical simulations, so while I can see that for someone outside the field this can look like black magic, I am certainly not impressed.

I mean, what he did is he used a commercial CFD (computational fluid dynamics) software, created a model of the cabin and iterated through different air outlet geometries until he found one that improved the situation. It's a brute-force approach, which could be done even by someone without Masters/PhD level CFD knowledge (we have 1st year undergrad students working on that kind of thing in the university...).

It's cool that he used that for a problem that apparently is not getting the deserved attention, and he is 17 (!) but, at least in my opinion, other inventions competing for the price look much more impacting/life-changing. For instance:

> Two runners-up each received $50,000. They included Wang’s fellow Canadian, Nicole Ticea, 16, who developed an inexpensive, disposable and electricity-free HIV-testing device for use in low-income communities.

Many innovations seem simple or obvious in hindsight. But if it solves a real problem and the engineers and Airbus and Boeing didn't think of it, then it must tell us something.

Who is to say that just because it hasn't been implemented, it was never thought of?

There isn't, but the losers don't get to write the history books.

When I read the title, I immediately guessed the method he used. Usually this means I can find some sort of evidence from the 1800's.

I'm guessing this is standard practice in hospitals, so an old idea applied to a new container, which is the norm with ideas.

the point is that he did it. just because you or 1st year undergrads could have done it is irrelevant because guess what, none of you did.

Maybe the reason no one has done it is because it was already determined to not be worth the resources required to research, develop, and implement?

EDIT: I'm just asking an honest question here.

Extremely unlikely. No one did it because no one thought of it. His solution is cheap and reasonably effective.

Pretty much the equivalent of those cardboard holders you get with a cup of Starbucks coffee. Extremely simple idea, some guy just happened to think of it and run with it. Just a reminder that there is plenty of room left in the world for simple inventions and solutions to common problems.

I got a lot of criticism for my comment because I said I was not very impressed by this (mostly because my field of research is very close to what he did). Just like some people think that formatting a PC is black magic, simply because they have no idea how any of that works, but we here now that it is pretty straight-forward.

As an analogy closer to developers, would you be impressed if a 17 years old built a simplistic CRUD phone number agenda app? I'm sure some of you here were accomplishing much greater things by that age. It does not impress you because you know the complexity is not very high, even though the kid is 17 years old.

So while I think we should always encourage science and research at younger ages, I keep my opinion that this is not as impressive as some might believe.

ps.: as per your comment, well, no one can solve all the problems in the world. They lack time to absorb knowledge to understand everything that is out there, and that's why we have specialized education. These people you are mentioning (and me, since you directed it to me) have other problems to solve.

Did you look into the HIV device to the same extent the judges did? It was "just" a modification of an existing one to create more turbulence and mix the reagents better, a more optimal geometry being found through computational fluid dynamics software...

(Just kidding, but seriously, it wasn't necessarily just that his problem was under-researched, and it was a competition by Intel, maybe everything had a computational modeling component as a requirement for entry. You're not impressed because you know how to use the software to do what he did, but the innovative step was thinking to use the software to do what he did. Certain strains of flu can be a huge killer, HIV moreso, but neither person cured either disease--you would need a lot more epidemiological details to know which one deserved the prize by your utilitarian standard. This is one of the most petty things I've ever read here.)

The competition is basically a huge science fair, and there are no direct constrains on the projects you can submit, but there are several things to take into account. First of all, research has to be conducted entirely in a twelve month period, so already even the best participants can't do work equivalent to a masters degree. During the judging process, the real world impact is given much importance. This contrasts with an emphasis on basic science and theoretocal research - both approaches are fine, but this is a conscious choice. Finally, the judges generally don't actually read a long manuscript but rather rely on a poster and a quick 15 minute interview/pitch where you broadly overview your project - meaning that the competition wants to emphasize scientific speaking (this also is a boon to international participants who wrote their work in another language).

Because the scope of research one can complete in a year is so limited (and has to be balanced with school), and the amount of experience everyone has is small, the scope of the work can't really compete with academia.

Source: participated

I wonder: how much of the work done by those who reached the national level, will be used in some way in real products ?

How does this compare to real scientists/engineers success rate ?

Just out of curiosity - and of course i know it's not the goal here - but education/inspiration is .

You are correct. I do not know the complexity or the merit of the other competitors, and I might have made my comment based on my current knowledge of the technology involved (knowing that it is not very complex).

8 million people fly daily. I'd say his invention has a big impact.

Why didn't you use your impressive Masters in Aeroacoustical Engineering and obviously superior intellect and knowledge to solve the fucking problem years ago?

You had to piss on the kid's effort and interest in solving a problem. I have to tell you, as a mentor to a great FIRST Robotics team, this is precisely the kind of attitude that can utterly destroy a kid.

Unbelievable.

Because it is not a problem? Also not solved. If you see the video the air still overlaps and you have no way of circulating individual passenger air. A sneeze is quite forceful and will convert the laminated airflow into turbulent. And personal AC zones is nothing new - been in the luxury car industry for a decade or so.

Now I am a simple programmer but what I would do is create system with 2 circles - outlets that suck air above each passenger and only one pump that pumps air into the cabin. Will either irradiate the air in transit.

Well, why don't you do it then? Make it happen. Submit an article, etc. If you CAN do it better you SHOULD!

Why bother? Airplanes are complicated enough to make them even more complicated, so we can solve non existing problem to calm the germophobia of people.

Of course you could have provided arguments to show why my criticism of his invention were not valid ... and actually have discussion. But whatever ...

Plus, most germs are spread by contact. It would be more beneficial to wipe down the armrests.

Who cares? It's a KID experiencing a moment of discovery after hard work. This deserves nothing but praise and support.

I did not mean anything like that. I have my own problems to solve. I only used my experience to asses that I have seen great solutions to more difficult problems by same-age people (17, 18 yr old undergrad students), and not that I am the expert in anything.

I did not piss on his effort; I actually thought it was worthwhile and impressive for a high-school student. MY point was that on a first look, regarding domain knowledge, there seemed to be more interesting competitors that were more deserving on the prize.

But who am I to judge, anyway?

"{airbnb | uber | whatsapp | etc} is such a simple idea. I could have done that."

"F*ck you, you didn't."

Yes, the problem with "you guys" is that you don't seem to want to solve problems like this. It's just too trivial. Otherwise one of you would have done it.

Why does it matter what approach he took to solve the problem?

What relevance does it have that someone else without domain expertise or post-graduate education is capable of solving this?

I'm not an expert in this field, nor do I think this is "black magic", but it does seem like this kid applied a good amount of ingenuity in attacking this problem.