A group of high school students from Vancouver Island have come up with a carbon monoxide bracelet that could save lives in the face of a wildfire.
Itsa国际传媒檚 only a prototype, but the design, theory and potential for it was enough to win the top prize for the product design challenge at the SHAD program at the University of P.E.I. this summer, a month-long program for high school students interested and excelling in science, technology, engineering, arts and math.
Matias Totz of St. Michaels University School was on the team that came up with the invention, part of the prestigious SHAD residence that promotes academic studies, and careers, in sciences and technology.
The beauty of the bracelet is how simple it is. If you breathe on it, it changes colour to show the user much of the poison is in their body.
sa国际传媒淥ur team learned through research that 80 per cent of deaths related to wildfires are carbon monoxide poisoning, itsa国际传媒檚 not burning to death, or houses falling down, itsa国际传媒檚 carbon monoxide,sa国际传媒� Totz said. sa国际传媒淲e wanted a solution you could have with you at all times.sa国际传媒�
For Totz, who is going into Grade 11 in September, the SHAD program was an eye-opener into the academic life beyond high school. The 16-year-old was one of 48 high school students from across Canada in the month-long entrepreneurship program that promotes science, technology, engineering, arts and math, in residence at a Canadian university.
sa国际传媒淭he kids there were amazing,sa国际传媒� Totz said. sa国际传媒淚 was expecting super smart people, but they were also very social and very nice, and everyone had something they were interested in.sa国际传媒�
Totzsa国际传媒檚 schedule was full of lectures and workshops. Each student presented on a topic for SHAD Speak. Totz talked about marine biology and was sa国际传媒榳owedsa国际传媒� by the others, including presentations on dance, the beauty of math, and plastic pollution. The highlight of the program was the design challenge. It actually came via a video message from Canadian astronaut Drew Feustel on the International Space Station.
Feustel challenged the students to create a solution that would help Canadians be resilient in the wake of a natural disaster.
sa国际传媒淲e started with a few ideas but they were too big, unrealistic,sa国际传媒� Totz said. sa国际传媒淲e wanted to do weather seeding, to control the clouds [and induce rain during droughts] but it was a little too crazy, so we went with the simple idea of a bracelet to tell you how much carbon monoxide is in your system,sa国际传媒� Totz said.
They phoned manufacturing and chemical companies, they called Health Canada, and eventually, the group 3-D-printed a bracelet.
sa国际传媒淯nfortunately we werensa国际传媒檛 allowed access to chemicals to create the bracelet but we did narrow it down to this palladium (ll) dichloride,sa国际传媒� Totz said. sa国际传媒淚f you breathe on it, it would change colour and show a measurement of how much carbon monoxide is in your system by showing different colours.sa国际传媒�
They also designed a financial plan on the production and distribution of the product.
sa国际传媒淭wo of us are from B.C., which is prone to wildfires, so we narrowed it down to fires. We actually had an idea for different nozzles on fire extinguishers that youth could handle, and we had this other an idea to install massive sprinkler systems in the forest, which was a bit too big,sa国际传媒� Totz laughed.
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