Young People: Changing the World with Brilliant Minds!

Suvir Mirchandani, a 6th grader just a year ago, didn't procrastinate his mandatory science fair project and then make his parents do most of it the way that I pretty much remember my science projects going.  Instead, Suvir chose to USE his brilliant mind.  He chose to really look at sustainability and everyday life and wondered how he could make the best of some daily resource.  In this case: ink.

Suvir's project, aside from winning the fair, calculated the amount of ink utilized by different text fonts, and proved that the typeface Garamond (which is not an option at present on Blogger or I'd be using it starting today), utilizes 30% less ink than Times New Roman.  He applied this information to figures he found regarding the yearly U.S. Government spending done on printing costs, to find that a simple switch between the two, similar, fonts, could save the government, and therefore the tax-payers not just a little bit, but MILLIONS of dollars each year.  He mentioned the fact that Chanel perfume costs approximately 1/2 of an equal amount of ink for printing.  Garamond, a thinner, lighter font than TNR, could, essentially also cut down on the paper use, given that it takes up less space horizontally per line.

Suvir didn't make that his science project this year in 7th grade, however.  Instead, having made a point (a multi-million-dollar point, at that!), he moved on to a project that allows disabled computer users to navigate the web solely with their eyesight and brain power, utilizing an electrode-based headset to measure "focus" and eye-tracking to gage which link the user would like to open in order to navigate.

And that's just one year in the life of a 15 year old who is already changing the world with his ability to design projects that give us real results.  Great work, Suvir!  You've inspired full-grown adults, and I hope we all can learn from you that our ability to change the world is stymied only by the glass ceilings that we build for ourselves.  Great work!

See the full story and video with this young genius here.