Teen Innovators: Nine Young People Engineering a Better World with Creative Inventions

A water purification system made of concrete and the same chemicals that block ultraviolet light in sunscreen. A robot made of PVC pipe that beat a shiny, eleven-thousand-dollar competitor in a robotics contest. An electricity-producing windmill built by a teen who taught himself physics by candlelight.

Teen Innovators: Nine Young People Engineering a Better World with Creative Inventions reveals how people of any age or experience level can create something that changes others' lives through nothing more than hard work, creativity, and inspiration. (Oh, and perhaps a bit of electrical wire, some plastic piping, and a couple tampons.) Utilizing the principles of design thinking, these inventors all tinkered, experimented, and failed―repeatedly―until their inventions worked. The windmill produced light. The water became safe to drink.

• Jack Andraka: improved pancreatic cancer test
• Gitanjali Rao: device to detect lead in drinking water
• William Kamkwamba: improvised electrical generator using windmill in Malawi
• Austen Veseliza: digital display glove to aid people with speech impairment
• Deepika Kurup: easier, cheaper method to remove toxins from drinking water
• Cristian Arcega, Lorenzo Santillan, Oscar Vasquez, Luis Aranda: underwater robot

Each of these stories offers inspiration to the next generation of teen innovators. You don't need a genius-level IQ or the latest and greatest technologies to create something that makes a difference. All you need is an idea and the determination to make it real.

Fred Estes taught science for nearly two decades in a school near his home in San Francisco. He's written several articles about science teaching, including "Compost: The Rot Thing for Our Earth" and he is a peer reviewer for a National Science Teaching Association journal. Before that, he taught high school English, worked as a financial analyst, joined an AI startup, developed corporate training programs, and earned a doctorate in educational psychology and technology. Currently, he teaches graduate students and teachers about design thinking, innovation, creative teaching methods, and hands-on-STEM curriculum.