Official Google Australia Blog: Ask your question in the 2012 Google Science Fair

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Ask your question in the 2012 Google Science Fair

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Are human beings born curious, or can curiosity be nurtured through environment, competition or a good teacher? Everyone’s got a question—that’s ours. But we’re sure you’ve got tons of questions, too. So we’re inviting students around the world to pose their most pressing questions and answer those questions through scientific inquiry as part of our second annual Google Science Fair.

Along with our partners CERN, The LEGO Group, National Geographic and Scientific American, it’s the largest online science competition in the world. Open to students ages 13-18, students (either individually or in teams of up to three people) pose a question, develop a hypothesis and conduct science experiments to test it.

Last year, we received entries that strove to solve a wide variety of needs, from “How can I cure cancer?” to “Can I teach a robot to learn English?” to “Can I build a faster sailboat?” The breadth and depth of these projects was incredibly impressive, and this year we hope to see even more entries from the next generation of brilliant young scientists.

From the entries we will recognise 90 regional finalists before our judges select the top 15 finalists, who will be flown to Google headquarters in Mountain View, California, for the Google Science Fair event on July 23, 2012. At the finals, a panel of distinguished international judges (like Vint Cerf, Sylvia Earle, and Nobel Laureates David Gross and Ada Yonath) will select top winners in each age category (13-14, 15-16, 17-18).

In addition to satisfying your curious mind, your project can also help to win you some pretty cool prizes, like a US$50,000 college scholarship from Google, a 10-day trip to the Galapagos Islands with a National Geographic Explorer or an internship at Google or any one of our partners.

We’re also introducing a new category for this year’s competition—the Scientific American Science in Action award which will see the winner earn US$50,000 and a year-long mentorship to make their project a reality. We were so inspired by 2011 finalist Harine Ravichandran’s project, which attempted to solve energy surges in rural villages, that this year we decided to recognise an outstanding project that addresses a social, environmental or health need.

The Google Science Fair will accept submissions until Sunday, April 1 at 11:59 GMT.

Google itself was founded through experimentation and with the Google Science Fair, we hope to inspire scientific exploration among the next generation of scientists and engineers, celebrate scientific talent, create scientific role models and unite students around the world in the quest for learning.

Visit google.com/sciencefair and ask your most burning questions.
(Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog) Posted by Cristin Frodella, Google Education Team