Host: Aug. 1 marked 15 years of the daily edition of our show, Ozarks at Large. As we take a few moments this week on the airwaves, asking you to consider what public radio means to you, we wanted to spend some time reminding you how critical this modest little news magazine show has been to our community for decades by digging through our archives and showing you great stories from the past.
Today, we go back to July 29, 2014. Former Ozarks at Large reporter Sara Burningham brings us this story from Camp Invention, a summer camp that took place at Leverett Elementary in Fayetteville.
“I think I would want to invent a robot that can do things for people who are completely paralyzed, that is controlled by your mind.”
“I want to be a scientist that invents potions to help the world. With potions.”
That’s Huck and Cayden at Camp Invention, a summer camp for kids entering first through sixth grades, where they do things like today’s activity: building some pretty amazing vehicles.
“I’m working on a car that can morph from driving on land, to driving on water, and to flying in the air. So for land... for land, it just drives like that. And then for air, the feathers flap up and down, but the balloon also gives it some lift. And then in the water, the balloon is supposed to move to the bottom and help it float.”
“I’m attaching three balloons. So that way after it goes on land a little bit, it will start flying upwards. And then I’ll have some feathers in case my balloons pop, and then it will help it glide.”
On hand for advice and guidance? A very special mentor, Dr. Robert Wilson, co-inventor of plasma video.
“So how do you plan to hook that on? Or have you got that far?”
Dr. Wilson, like many innovators, stumbled upon his invention while he was looking for something else back in 1963 at the University of Illinois.
“I was looking for a thesis. I thought I was going to work in circuit theory and graph theory—some aspects of that—and I wasn’t having any luck finding a research project. I had an assistantship at the time where I was helping them with what was called the PLATO teaching machine, and that was the first time we tried to combine computers in teaching. So you could have an individual teaching situation controlled by the computer, but the students could work at their own pace, doing their own work. And to make that practical, we needed a new display device, and we didn’t have one. So my job was to kind of come up with a new display device. Well, in the meantime, I’m looking for what can I do my PhD thesis on and not making any progress. One day, I went home. I mentioned to my wife, ‘You know, I think I’ve fallen into a thesis. I didn’t even recognize it. I just need to change direction.’ And it turns out this was just an absolutely perfect thing. My background was physics. I got a master’s in physics and a bachelor’s in physics, and then switched to electrical engineering, thinking I was going to work in circuit theory. But it turns out the plasma display’s predecessor was predicated on the nature of gaseous discharges. So it was really physics again, and nobody had really done much work in what would be called electrodeless discharges, where the electrodes are outside the volume where the discharge happens. It turns out that had the characteristics we needed. It had an inherent memory if you have the right gas mixture. And everything else is history, you know? So it worked beautifully.”
And now we’re in a room full of kids who don’t know a TV screen has ever been anything other than flat and don’t know where the “tube” in YouTube comes from.
“I know, isn’t that funny? Yeah, it’s something else."
And I suppose also another example of how necessity really is the mother of invention.
"It really is. And it’s, I think, a matter of not being overwhelmed by not knowing. Instead, enjoy the not knowing, ‘Oh, where will this lead, then?’ In our society, I think we tend to be so preoccupied with controlling everything. And that’s a mistake. I think we need to be relaxed about it.”
So much is knowable now that we all have devices in the palm of our hands that can tell us just about everything. Developing the curiosity to find out is tough with kids.
“Yes. And, you know, we have to realize we probably have to be a little humble about what we think we know. Because I think at every age, we always think what we know is really the epitome of everything. But if you judged it from a thousand years later, it would look pretty simple. And I think, really, the good scientists would say the same thing. Even in our fancy journals, what’s written there isn’t the absolute truth. It’s the best we know how to do. But science is self-correcting. Over time and many years from now, anything probably would be wrong to some extent at least. And so it’s all evolving. And, you know, we’re developing and stepping on one another’s progress and adding to it. And who knows where we can go and what we can do?"
I mean, that is exciting, but it’s also daunting. Because, you know, if we think about how quickly technology changes and advances in your lifetime, in my lifetime, and what these kids are going to see in terms of changing technologies. What do you think is the key skill, the key or core value that parents can encourage and foster in their children to sort of future-proof them?
“Well, I think a good, healthy curiosity is really good. I think everyone needs a good grounding in mathematics, for instance. In my career, probably the mathematics was the more constant of everything else. The physics changed radically. The science and engineering aspects all changed. But the basic stuff really didn’t change. But probably the curiosity, and being willing to experiment and say, ‘Okay, I admit I don’t know, but what will happen if I try?’ And I can’t make a mistake by trying. I just maybe at worst find out, ‘Oh, that is not the way to do it.’ So I learned something. I don’t need to go down that path. I’ll try something new. And just that healthy curiosity, I think, takes us a long, long way.”
Jenny Camel is director of K–12 science and instructional technology at Fayetteville Public Schools. She’s also director of the Camp Invention here at Leverett. And she says the camps make her very hopeful for the future of American innovation.
“Our future rests in the hands of these kids and their ability to be innovative. And it excites me to see what we have ahead of us when I see what these kids are able to come up with.”
“You’re doing a great job, kids.”
“Thank you!”
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