Reply #294: What's not mentioned....

[Hypatia82]

is that competitions like this are as useful as tits on a boar. For one they take a very narrow view of what constitutes scientific work and related knowledge. And they take a not so nice view of anything practical. What the kid did is nice, but it's just fancy math. If the kid had applied it and come out with his own wing design program or a functional model wing, and presented that? He likely wouldn't have won. Of course had he either or both of those he should be hit over the head with a 40 lb bass for entering a contest.

Personally I find science contests like this great wastes of time and pushing science in the wrong way. There's other contests where the rules defy logical defense. Like competitions for robotics that only accept team entries. So an individual child who has no one else around or just wants to do it on their own is excluded. Worse none of these contests ever consider things like how a person thinks of what they know, do they tutor/teach and so on. The great genius of Einstein wasn't in his theories, it was in that he never thought anything he knew couldn't be learned by anyone else who cared to learn it. Of course his views on schooling, that it should be presented with joy and as a gift not a chore, for starters, don't sit well with the vast majority of educators or reformers.

I think the winner of this contest should be whoever enters with an entry they know won't win because it doesn't meet the unwritten criteria but enters anyways, just to thumb their nose at authority. If there's anything that should be encouraged it is free thinking and a healthy contempt for authority. Neither of which the Westinghouse prize does much about. Or cares about.