Teenager wins prize for improved supercapacitor technology

Moderator Note - deirdre
ok guys, no more of this "my friends car runs on water" bunk discussion. It's off topic.
 
To the original question: superconductors, as we can currently create them, have very poor consumer applications. They have many industrial ones and there's hope for infrastructure level applications, but here's the thing: they need to be kept incredibly cold, and currently that cold requires immensely more energy to generate than can be saved from their use. This invention will effectively use fifty to a hundred times more power to recharge a cell phone, provided the cell phone is kept at a temperature that few electronics and no screen can operate.

There's no guarantee the development will work with hypothetical room temperature superconductors, because it was done using cold superconductors, and warm superconductors will require new materials.

To date the one superconductor development with strong potential consumer level applications was room temperature metallic hydrogen. And they still haven't actually been able to confirm it's hydrogen or if metallic hydrogen has any of its theorized properties.

The ISEF isn't peer reviewed, also. It's winners are held to a high standard, but it's surprising how few actually pan out on further research. And it's not unheard of for winners (either the fair itself or the many organizations that give awards within it) to be outright faked, there's been an example or two discussed on MB and in the 90's someone from my high school lost a college scholarship after getting caught.
 
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