A 13-year-old San Jose girl wins top prize of $25,000 in STEM competition

Young people are extremely concerned about the changing climate and warming planet.

According to a landmark survey published in the Lancet, the vast majority of young people are concerned about climate change, feeling anxious, angry, and powerless.

Despite this, our youth have generated optimism and creativity.

Take, for example, a water filtering solution developed by a young South Bay girl. Clean drinking water is necessary for survival, but climate change is threatening supplies by increasing the likelihood of severe drought.

“Actually, two billion people do not have access to safe drinking water. And that’s what inspired my project: to find a nearly zero-cost way to filter water,” said Tina Jin, a San Jose middle school student.

Jin is only 13 years old, but the middle school student has wisdom beyond her years. She met with CBS News Bay Area at Cupertino’s Public Library, accompanied by her mother, Mary.

“This is my awesome, amazing mother. “She’s the best cook on the planet, and she’s also very supportive and nice,” exclaimed the student, wrapping her arm around her smiling mother.

Mrs. Jin recently took her daughter to Washington, D.C., where she competed in the nation’s premier Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) competition.

It’s called the Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovative Challenge. Every year, approximately 65,000 middle school students participate in the contest. Tina Jin was one of 30 finalists.

“I wanted to find a way to use natural materials as material for a water filter,” according to her.

Jin noticed many tiny holes inside animal bones, similar to those found in commercial water filters. The honeycomb structure renders the bones porous. This gave her an idea. But first, she needed a supply of bones to test whether they could filter dirty water.

She remembered something her mother used to say when she went shopping for meat.

“I remember my mom always complains about how much in one pound of meat there’s probably more bone than meat,” said Tina with a laugh.

The student started collecting animal bones from family meals that would otherwise be discarded. She started using them in her research and tested them to see if they could filter dirty water.

She first noticed that only a portion of the animal bones had been worked. She decided to grind up the bones to make the structures more accessible.

She ground the bones and strained dirty water through a portable filter made from discarded bones and readily available household items. Tina’s filter was verified to work by an independent outside expert.

“By grinding the animal bones, you can use all the parts of the bone and so by grinding the animal bones into powder, my filter was able to work successfully,” Jin told me.

The judges were so impressed by the young student’s work that she won the top prize, the ASCEND (Aspiring Scientists Cultivating Exciting New Discoveries) Award, worth $25,000.

CBS News Bay Area asked her mother for her thoughts, which the student translated for her.

“My mother said she was very excited. Jin smiled. “She was speechless.”

The student intends to save money for college and is applying for a patent. She also believes that despite the planet’s rapid warming due to climate change, there is still hope.

“No one can do everything, but everyone can do something,” she told me.

Her animal bone water filter was a “bone-afide” success.

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