First Annual Biomimicry Youth Challenge Winners (2011)

Kindergarten-4th grade (ages 5-9): Participants in this category were asked to create a submission based upon lessons they learned from our Ask the Planet Teaching Guides (this curricula is downloadable for free and corresponds with each track of the award-winning children’s music album, Ask the Planet).

The winner in this category is the upper elementary students at The Montessori School of Northampton, Massachusetts. In collaboration with the school’s music teacher, Sujata Konowitz, and other faculty, these 4th, 5th, and 6th grade students have spent months writing their own musical about biomimicry, for which they created dialogue, costumes, and sets, and are using instrumental music from Ask the Planet. A schoolwide performance of the musical is planned for June.

“Ask The Planet is a beautiful collection of songs that was perfect for our task. The music is inspiring, lively and poignant. The students immediately fell in love with the melodies and lyrics. In the classroom, teachers used ideas from the Teaching Tools off the website as writing prompts. Students were asked to image a world without garbage, took nature walks to observe the world, write nature inspired poetry, and so much more. The Teaching Tools were invaluable.” – Sujata Konowitz

Honorable mention for this category goes to the K-3rd grade afterschool students from the Magellan International School, in Austin, Texas. In collaboration with Punto Verde educator Sayuri Yamanaka and others, the bilingual afterschool group used the Ask the Planet Teaching Guides to do a variety of activities exploring biomimicry, including using the school garden to examine soil micro-organisms, creating art projects, and holding a “talk show” in which students adopted the viewpoint of various organisms. Teachers also translated two of the Teaching Guides into Spanish, and created their own additional Guide that explores the micro-cosmos.

5th-8th grade (ages 10-14): Participants in this category were asked to go outdoors and seek biological models in their region that inspired them to solve design challenges.

The winner in this category is a student group composed of 6th graders Risa Fines, Maeve Doyle, and Kyra Hulsebus from Sarah Gainey’s class at Saint John’s Prep School in Collegeville, Minnesota. These students were inspired by the circulatory system in the paws of wolves to design a self-warming boot called “Cozy Paws,” that has webs of water-filled tubes running through the rubber on the bottom of the boot. The water is kept warm by a friction-creating motor located in the heel of the boot that produces heat.

The Cozy Paw, a self-warming boot inspired by the circulatory system in wolf paws, by Risa Fines, Maeve Doyle and Kyra Hulsebus

Honorable mention goes to 11-year olds Lilly Xie, Rose Zahn, and Salma Muftah, also from Saint John’s Prep School, for their invention of a new kind of fork for children and elderly people, that picks up food more easily based on the way owl talons effectively scoop up prey. Honorable mention also goes to 6th grader Kevin Huo of Foster City, California, for his exploration of 

Kevin Huo's illustration

what coastal redwoods can teach us about improving architecture.

9th-12th grade (ages 15-18): Participants in this category were asked to conduct original biological research or engineering testing/prototyping to explore biological function and technological applications.

The winner in this category is senior Mary Furth, of the Convent of the Sacred Heart, Greenwich, Connecticut, who conducted an original biological research project on the potential of chemicals present in geraniums to act as a non-toxic inhibitor of certain garden pests, a vital first-step to establishing the chemicals’ functionality and to potentially synthesizing the natural pesticide.

Honorable mention in this category goes to 9-year-old Sean Dupre of Houston, Texas, who explored potential design lessons from spider webs to strengthen architectural elements (e.g., for buildings and bridges), by testing the strength of fishing line in different arrangements using a fish scale, including patterns found in spider webs. Though submitting in a category for much older students, we simply had to honor Sean’s creativity, experimental design, and excellent submission, which demonstrated to us that we may need to rethink our age categories for next year’s Challenge!

Sean Dupre's design, showing how spider web designs can strengthen architechtural structures

Congratulations and thank you to all the participants of the 2010-2011 Biomimicry Youth Challenge!