Alright, so in 6th grade I began my research for science fair
with a relatively simple project.
If I changed the design of an SS model rocket in different ways,
which design will fly the highest?
Now, I had predicted that the rocket
with no modifications would go the highest,
but in fact, this hypothesis was wrong in one case.
The rocket that I had added tape to sticking out all over
ended up flying the highest,
even though I predicted that the tape would add drag,
therefore the rocket would not fly as high.
So I did some research as to why this might've happened
and I decided that maybe the tape had acted as vortex generators.
Now vortex generators sound more complicated than they really are.
They're just these little blades, I guess you could call them,
that are used on generally smaller airplanes to reduce the drag
and add lift at a slow speed in order to reduce stall speed.
A stall is when the wing of an airplane
gets at a very high angle to the air coming at it
and the air comes over and separates off the end of the wing,
as you can see in the picture on the left.
Now the wing can no longer create lift,
but with vortex generators,
the air comes over the wing and adheres to the wing
so the wing continues to create lift.
7th grade was the blood and bones of my project.
I was privileged to work with a mentor named Adrian Adamson that year.
He worked on the Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers.
He's obviously really smart, as you can tell,
and in his spare time, he made these altimeters right here.
They're for model rockets,
and they measure altitude and speed among other things.
I remember the first time he came over to my house
to explain how to use his altimeters.
We were sitting at my dining room table,
and he was explaining how to use the altimeter, and pointing to a computer,
and explaining all of these complex equations,
and I just had no idea what he was talking about.
You know that feeling you get
when you so much so don't know what somebody is talking about
where you can't even ask questions about it?
That's the feeling that I got.
After he left, my mom came up to me and said,
"What did he tell you about the altimeter?"
and I said, "I pretty much nodded and smiled my way through it,
and I wrote down these random words I heard here and there,
but other than that, I didn't know what he was talking about."
But, undeterred by his superior intelligence,
I took the few ideas that I had written down
and did some research,
and actually did some Q&A back and forth with Adrian,
and I came up with a plan for my seventh grade science project.
The plan was to do 24 launches
to prove that vortex generators reduce drag on model rockets.
The plan didn't go exactly as intended.
So I launched out at my cousin's ranch in the winter in the snow,
and it was cold.
On top of all of that, it was windy,
so that meant that the rockets pretty much never landed within the ranch's property.
So there was a lot of running and jumping of fences and avoiding barbed wire.
Look at that great hair-do I have there.
(Laughter)
That not only sacrificed my sanity, but also my jeans.
Also the rockets never lasted maybe more than six launches
without needing a repair.
So, there I was, torn pants and all, running after these rockets
like a deranged dog running after tennis balls,
there's snow in my boots,
and I'm trying to make these repairs really quick and easy in my car,
and it smells like sulphur and glue,
and then I'm running all the way back out into the middle of the field
to enter in this data from my altimeter into this computer with frozen hands.
Unfortunately, instead of 24 times, I had to repeat it 43 times.
This is because about half way through,
I realized that the data I was getting was not accurate.
So, I had to do 19 more launches in order to make it accurate.
That was not fun.
Near the end, I was in tears because my shock cord had broke,
and the altimeter plummeted to the ground for the thousandth time,
and the wires had popped out and it was cold, and I was hungry,
and it was late.
I just wanted to be done.
But I kept testing for the glory of discovery.
In 8th grade, I was given the fantastic opportunity
to work in the wind tunnel at CU Denver
with the assistance of professor Joe Cullen.
The really cool thing if you think about it, of using a wind tunnel,
is the Wright brothers all the way back when they invented
the first powered airplane used wind tunnels to test their designs.
Now NASA uses wind tunnels to test their designs,
and now I got to test a wind tunnel to test my design.
So when I first arrived at the wind tunnel and met Professor Cullen
was that same feeling when I met Adrian,
and he was explaining all this equipment and all this data I would be getting,
and all of these words that I did not understand,
and all I was hearing was Charlie Brown's
teacher going "wah, wah, wah, wah."
But eventually, because Mr. Cullen was very good at explaining these concepts,
eventually, I figured out the ways of the wind tunnel.
The nice thing about using the wind tunnel was that I was able to control variables
such as wind and the tilting of the rocket
that I was not able to control the year before when launching the rockets.
So even though everything was going great in the wind tunnel,
there's always a point in an experiment
where everything just comes to a screeching halt.
This happened for me when I realized that the data this year
was conflicting with the data the year before.
It was showing that the vortex generators in the wind tunnel were adding drag
at every position and every speed, which I did not want,
while the year before,
the vortex generators had consistently reduced drag
at a low speed, so I had to find out why are these results conflicting?
Where had I gone wrong?
At that moment, my future flashed before my eyes,
and I knew that if I did not solve this problem
I would be doomed to a life of failure
and my dreams of becoming an aerospace engineer were dashed.
But, coming back to reality, Professor Cullen came to my aid,
and we went through some extensive brainstorming
about what might be the issue,
and we came up with an idea that maybe the very things
that we were trying to control with the wind tunnel,
such as the wind and the tilting of the rocket,
were the things that allowed the vortex generators
to reduce the drag in the first place.
So to simulate this idea,
I mounted the rocket at an angle in the wind tunnel.
You can see that here.
These tests proved very successful because the vortex generators
consistently reduced drag when the rocket was at an angle.
So now, I made this mechanism here.
There's me in my incredibly messy shed.
I made this mechanism that extends the vortex generators
when they reduce drag, and they're in while they add drag.
I have this radio controlled airplane controller,
and I flip this switch, and it sends a signal to this servo.
You can tell it's actually pretty simple.
It sends a signal to this servo in here, and that servo pushes down on this,
which is pretty flimsy, but it's a prototype,
and it's got vortex generators on the end.
It pushes down on this cone in here,
and the vortex generators push down and out on that cone
and out of the rocket.
After these three years of hard work on these science fair projects,
I was able to have some pretty amazing opportunities.
After a long application process,
I was chosen among 29 other 7th, 8th, and 9th graders
to participate in this Broadcom MASTERS Competition.
It was great because I met and worked with kids
that had the same interests as me in the STEM category,
which is science, technology, engineering, and math.
(Cheers)
We met the President, and he's really tall,
and we got a minor planet named after us,
which is pretty cool too.
And now here I am doing a TEDx talk,
and it all started with the science fair and an idea.
So now let's move ahead in time.
How can what I've learnt be applied in the future?
NASA and other private companies are breaking new ground
in developing space flight technologies,
not only for exploration, but also for flight around the globe,
commercial space flight.
Vortex generators may be able to be applied to these new rocket designs
in order to reduce the drag while the rocket is in the atmosphere.
SpaceX is a company in the aerospace industry,
and they've developed this rocket called the Grasshopper.
What the Grasshopper can do, which is very cool,
is it launches from one spot, and then, it can launch, maneuver, even hover,
and the it comes back down and can land in that same spot upright,
unlike a space shuttle, which launches and lands like an airplane.
Colorado has been, and will continue to be,
a very important part of the aerospace industry.
We have CU, which has a nationally-recognized aerospace program,
Lockheed Martin, United Launch Alliance,
and Sierra Nevada, who is working on the Dream Chaser,
which could possibly be NASA's next space vehicle.
One more cool thing about Colorado:
we have Front Range Airport, which soon may very well be Front Range Space Port
for space flight transportation.
Imagine yourself, instead of climbing into an airplane
for a trip from New York to London that would take eight hours,
climbing into a rocket to blast into low earth orbit
at 17,500 miles per hour for a trip of an hour and a half instead.
Or even imagine yourself being one of the first people to step onto an asteroid,
or even Mars.
As a kid, you're at the perfect age to accomplish this goal
of being an astronaut.
But there are these barriers, unfortunately, that will have to be passed
in order for all of this to be possible.
One is expense, two is fuel and propulsion, three is efficiency.
Researchers and scientists are all working on these issues,
but young, fresh minds are really necessary to come up with these ideas
that nobody has come up with before.
All it takes is to have just a little bit of drive, passion, motivation,
just interest in the things around you.
Ask your counselor or teacher about getting a mentor like I did,
and new opportunities will open themselves up to you.
Just experiment with the things around you also.
There's so much more to explore and be discovered.
The Universe is immense, you can see here,
and expanding.
This is a real photo.
Each of those lights is a galaxy
and each galaxy has hundreds of billions of stars.
Each star has a Solar System, and each Solar System has planets,
and we are just one planet in one Solar System.
That just tells you how vast the Universe is,
and how much more there is to be explored.
So, exploration and discovery should be a part of life.
Make them a part of yours.
Thank you.
(Applause)