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Sunday, January 5, 2014

16 Year Old Turkish Girl Wins Google's "Science In Action Award"





One of the incredible Mighty Girls who inspired us in 2013 is 16-year-old Elif Bilgin of Turkey who won the Google Science Fair's Voter's Choice Award and the 2013 Science in Action Award. Elif won both awards at the prestigious global science fair for her invention of a new bioplastic made from banana peels that she hopes can replace some of the petroleum-based plastics currently in use. The Science in Action Award, which earned Elif a $50,000 prize and a year of mentoring to help further her work, honors a project that addresses an environmental, health, or resource challenge, and is easy to put into action. In her report, Elif expressed her hope that her invention could one day replace some of the petroleum-based plastics currently in use. She described it as being so easy to make that "one could do it at home" and there are ample raw materials -- in Thailand alone, she noted, 200 tons of peels are discarded daily. To develop her bioplastic, Elif experimented for two years and went through ten trials before finding one that didn't decay rapidly or was too weak to be useful. She believes that her discovery could be used in applications such as insulation for electric cables as well as for cosmetic prostheses -- a strong interest of this Mighty Girl who hopes to attend medical school one day. When asked what being recognized as a Science in Action Award winner meant to her, Elif replied: "For me, this means that my project actually has a potential to be a solution to the increasing pollution problem caused by petroleum-based plastic. It also means that I have started the process of changing the world, which makes me feel like a winner already.” Kudos to this incredible Mighty Girl for her impressive ingenuity and passion for using science to change the world! To read a profile on Elif in Scientific American, visit http://tinyurl.com/mfnzhrm or listen to an interview with her on PRI's The World at http://www.theworld.org/2013/07/turkey-plastic-banana-peels/ For an excellent book about female inventors throughout history, check out “Girls Think of Everything” for readers 8 to 13 at http://www.amightygirl.com/girls-think-of-everything. Or, for younger readers age 4 to 9, we highly recommend the newly released fiction book "Rosie Revere, Engineer" about a budding young engineer at http://www.amightygirl.com/rosie-revere-engineer To share the stories of other real-life girls and women in science with your Mighty Girl, visit our "Science Biographies" section at http://www.amightygirl.com/books/history-biography/biography?cat=209 For hands on science kits and toys to spark your own Mighty Girl’s interest in science, visit our "Science Toys" section at http://www.amightygirl.com/toys/toys-games/science-math There's also a wonderful children's music album that was specifically created to encourage girls' interest in science called "Science Fair" at http://www.amightygirl.com/science-fair














One of the incredible Mighty Girls who inspired us in 2013 is 16-year-old Elif Bilgin

of Turkey who won the Google Science Fair's Voter's Choice Award and the 2...

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