The results of the "School Premier League" competition of youth research projects were summed up in St. Petersburg. More than 400 high school students from all over Russia came to the Mining University to present their own inventions in the field of efficient subsoil use to the scientific community. What are young minds capable of today?
One often hears that today's school education is not comparable in level with what it was during Soviet times and, to put it mildly, leaves much to be desired. Simplification of educational programs and their fixation on preparation for the Unified State Exam; fall of prestige of strategically important for the country engineering professions; total reduction of passing grades even in the top universities, which was reflected in the quality of students. These and other problems make it doubtful that future Lomonosovs, Kapitzes and Lobachevskys can emerge within the framework of the current development strategy of the ministries responsible for education. However, there are no rules without exceptions. The "School Premier League" competition, which is held under the auspices of the Commission of the Russian Federation for UNESCO on the basis of the Mining University, is precisely aimed at identifying gifted young people who have a high level of development of leadership qualities and professional competencies.
Roman Yakunin, a student of Lyceum No. 38 in Nizhny Novgorod, became the winner in the Modern Energy section with his work. This young man prefers words to action. He presented a functional model of a wind turbine generator.
"Since childhood I was interested in alternative energy. I read and listened a lot on the subject, went to Ulyanovsk to get acquainted with the wind farm there, tried to invent various devices for home and garden. As a result, the idea was born of a three-blade installation for private use, which everyone can put in his yard and generate electricity from the wind. For help, I turned to my physics teacher, who later became my supervisor. The height limit of the wind turbine is still limited to three meters, and its power is more than enough to power, for example, a refrigerator, but in the future I plan to increase the scale and improve the quality characteristics. By selecting the motor and the blades, it will be possible to regulate its efficiency," said Roman, who expects to become a design engineer.
He calls the system of statistical data collection the scientific novelty of the project. That is, in addition to making the machine itself, the young man wrote a corresponding program and created a mobile application. The control system allows remote monitoring of the machine's operation (wind speed, rotation speed, generated power, etc.) and sends the data to the phone. In real time, the conditional user can track how much power he receives and spends.
Natalia and Svetlana Pronin, students of Gymnasium No. 1 in Kovrov, Vladimir region, have also thought about the issue of power consumption. Their project on optimization of a "smart" parking zone won in the section "Intelligent mining, occupational health and safety, applied geology and construction."
"The implementation of our idea will improve the environmental situation in cities, reduce the cost of air recirculation in closed parking lots, as well as save time and money for drivers. We offer a whole complex of solutions: to illuminate spaces with light indicators to determine their occupancy from afar, to display the number of free spaces on a special scoreboard, to reserve unoccupied spaces remotely by qr-code using a mobile application created by us. Besides, the project will help to save electric energy by means of infra-red sensors, which change the brightness of parking lighting when detecting motion", - presented the idea Svetlana.
According to Natalya, such contests provide an opportunity to gain experience in participating in major scientific forums, to improve such skills as public speaking and presentation of own projects, as well as to meet like-minded people.
Maksim Mavryashkin from Pre-University MEPhI, when choosing the direction of his research, was guided by the real challenge, which is acute for a number of industries - the problem of import substitution. He created a device to measure the volume of bodies with complex geometric shapes.
"Such installations are not produced in Russia, and the acquisition and maintenance of foreign analogues in our country is now difficult, and their cost will be extremely high. At the same time this type of equipment is necessary for the key branches of economy: metallurgy, military-industrial complex and nuclear industry. Therefore, the main goal of my project was to develop a design solution from Russian-made components with our own software and clear interface, several times cheaper than imported variants," explains Maxim.
Of course, the level of the task is far from the school physics program. To implement the idea, the young man developed a pycnometer scheme consisting of two chambers and a tube connecting them, equipped with electromagnetic valves and pressure sensors. One part of the parts was specially made on a lathe, while the other was selected from an assortment of domestic suppliers. The young man then wrote a program that allowed him to control the working model.
He suggested using helium as the filling. The argument in favor of gas rather than water was the presence of materials that degrade or explode from it (such as sodium), as well as materials with great porosity (that is, the surface tension will not allow water to penetrate into the fine pores, unlike gas).
"MEPhI, of which my lyceum is a structural subdivision, is part of the community of universities - the Nedra Consortium. The university's rector received an invitation to participate in the forum. And here I am, counting on new acquaintances for future cooperation!" - sums up Maxim.
No less interesting invention was recognized as the best in the section "Machine building and innovation in the automotive industry." Andrey Kharlamov, an eleventh grader from Nizhny Novgorod, presented an automated control system for a steam engine based on an Arduino microprocessor to the jury. The idea is original, as is its realization - the study of the possibilities of automation on the example of a machine that was created in the XVII century and reached its greatest relevance in the XIX century, until it was superseded by the internal combustion engine. Thus, it is a work of purely experimental nature.
"How does a steam engine work? Depending on what position the flywheel is in, the spool opens certain valves. I removed all this and installed four solenoid valves, and now because we know with the help of sensors in what position the piston is, we can understand which valves should be opened. After demonstrating the effectiveness of installing such solutions on a retro model, in the future I would like to develop programs for the implementation of the automated system in existing machines and mechanisms. This will be in demand for many years to come," Andrei assures.
He has already participated in a number of thematic competitions with his invention, but this was the first time he encountered this level of organization.
"Before that, the jury was mostly school physics teachers, but here we talked to professors and graduate students from narrow departments who can help with advice on future research work. Participation in such events gives an understanding of where you can enter after the eleventh grade and what a particular university can give to its students. In addition, they give bonuses that can be used when entering," Andrei Kharlamov explained.
Thus, all the winners of the competition were given the opportunity to take part in the School Leader program, also conducted by St. Petersburg Mining University. This competition provides a grant to compensate for travel to the city on the Neva, additional stipends, and the opportunity to choose a place in the dormitories on a priority basis. In addition, the finalists received a targeted educational grant in the amount of 100 thousand rubles each with the right to use it upon successful completion of the first semester of study.
The 2022 admission campaign across the country showed a skew in the interest of applicants towards the humanities universities and faculties. In this situation it is especially important to popularize technical education already at the school level, because the issues of development of the mineral complex of the country, construction and modernization of industries, reduction of anthropogenic load on ecosystems and formation of a comfortable urban environment are addressed by engineers, designers, planners and technologists, but not by designers and philologists. This means that competitions such as the School Premier League, which from this year will become an integral part of the well-known International Student Forum "Current Problems of Subsoil Use", are of particular importance.