Atlanta Student Named One Of The Nation's Top Young Scientists

ATLANTA, GA -- William Jenkins, an 8th grade student at The Westminster Schools in Atlanta, has been named one of the top young scientists in the country. William is a top 30 finalist in the Broadcom MASTERS - the nation’s premier middle school STEM competition. He will be traveling to Washington DC to compete for more than $100,000 in awards.

Broadcom MASTERS (Math, Applied Science, Technology and Engineering for Rising Stars), a program founded and produced by the Society for Science & the Public, seeks to inspire young scientists, engineers and innovators who will solve the grand challenges of the future. The finalists will travel to Washington, DC from October 19-23 where they will participate in a rigorous competition that leverages Project-based Learning to test and demonstrate their mastery of 21st Century skills of critical thinking, communication, creativity and collaboration in each of the STEM areas.

In addition to participating in team challenges, the finalists will meet with government officials and showcase their projects for the public during a free event at the National Geographic Society on October 20 from 1-4pm. Winners will be named during an awards ceremony on October 23 at the Carnegie Institution for Science.

About Will and his project

Project Background: “One frustrating problem for competitive tennis players like me is when dead tennis balls are mixed with the thousands of good balls,” Will says. Dead balls bounce lower and mess up a player’s shots. Training centers know about the problem. From time to time, some centers have coaches sort all the balls by hand, which takes up lots of time and costs centers money. Other centers skip sorting and just replace all their balls periodically. That saves time but trashes many good balls as well. Either way, millions of tennis balls go to landfills every year —“enough to stretch from [Washington] D.C. to Anchorage” in Alaska, Will says.

Tactics and Results: Will designed and built an automatic tennis ball sorter. “My machine uses the same drop method professional tennis coaches use to sort balls,” he explains. One at a time, the device drops each ball onto a brick surface. Sensors are lined up to correspond with light beams at different heights. A computer connected to the sensors notes which light beams a ball blocks when it bounces. The computer then signals a motor that controls a tilt table. A net catches the ball and drops it onto the table. The ball then rolls into a basket for good or bad balls. After lots of tweaking, Will tested the machine. He did ten trials each for three good balls and three bad balls. The data showed that the machine sorted the balls consistently and correctly. For his next prototype, Will plans to shorten the cycle time and have four parallel sorting lines. That way, the machine could sort 4,800 balls in an hour! Will hopes to develop the project into a money-making business.

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Other Interests: Will’s favorite sport is tennis, but he also enjoys water and snow skiing, ping pong, lacrosse, and baseball. He’s active in scouting, computer club and robotics. He’s an amateur juggler as well! If his tennis ball sorter leads to a profitable business, Will plans to lead the company. Otherwise, he hopes to pursue a career in computer science. “I believe that artificial intelligence is a game-changing technology,” he says.

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