Caption 1: 14-year-old Maanasa Mendu presents her innovation during the Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge. Mend's innovation works to capture unused wind, solar and rain energy, and turn it into reliable source of energy for developing communities.
14-year-old Scientist Aims to Solve the Energy Crisis The family trip. For most kids it’s a chance to relax, visit a new destination, collect souvenirs, and create stories and memories to share with their friends throughout the year. For 14-year-old Maanasa Mendu, however, the family trip provided her with a vision of how she needed to change the world. Mendu’s spur for innovation came during a family trip to India where she witnessed firsthand the energy scarcity experienced in regions of the world far from her native Ohio. The family makes the visit every summer, and during this particular visit, as she experienced persistent blackouts, Mendu knew she had to do something about it. So she got to work. With an idea in her head, she found her opportunity to grow and develop it through the Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge. The competition challenges students to create an innovation that solves a real-world problem
affecting their global, national or local communities. Nature inspired Mendu to solve the problem of unreliable power. By harnessing wind, solar and rain energy, she created a device that could provide energy in any rural or urban environment. Her early prototypes used recycled soda bottles hanging from a tree. She then attached solar panels like leaves and while these prototypes looked simple, they actually captured energy - as much as 9 volts with her third prototype. Mendu used this discovery and her work thus far to enter the Young Scientist Challenge by recording a two-minute video describing the science behind her innovation. Judges evaluated her video based on her creativity, scientific knowledge, persuasiveness and overall presentation, and liked what they saw. Mendu was named a competition finalist and paired with a mentor, 3M senior product development engineer Margaux Mitera, to further develop her project. GetRuralLeaderMag.com | APRIL 2017 9
