Whiz Kid of the Week: John Nolan's Scientific Research Defies Gravity

Name, age: John Nolan, 18

School:

Achievement: At the Long Island Science and Engineering Fair on March 22, John tied for third place in the Plant Biology category and received the Ricoh Regional 2011 Sustainable Development award for his research.

Key To Awesomeness: John has been working on his research project called, “The Effect of Vertical Rotation on Corn Seed Development,” in the Methods in Research class at the high school for the past two years.

He took corn seeds and rotated them vertically to negate the affects of gravity. The research he found can be applied towards growing plants for food in zero gravity environments, for example during long term space missions, and also can be applied to growing food in urban areas.

Lisa Benincasa, who leads the Methods in Research class, said, “He has a good questioning mind and has the motivation to back that up. It’s a hard thing to do." No easy task: "You have to really stay with it to really work all the bugs out,” she said.

John won two awards at the Long Island Science and Engineering Fair, one for his category, Plant Biology, and an another award called the Ricoh Regional 2011 Sustainable Development award, given to those who had the most promising plans for future development.

The fair involves 70 schools from the Long Island area with over 485 students competing in 17 different categories in the initial round. John moved onto the second round of judging where he placed in his category.

In addition to being a science whiz, John is also an athlete and a leader. He is the captain of  the golf, basketball and now the lacrosse teams. He is also president of Athletes helping Athletes—a club that takes high school athletes down to the l to visit students, teach them and help develop their social skills.

A stellar student, John is on National Honor Society and is on his way to Rensselear Polytecnic Instiute for Engineering, where he plans to continue playing lacrosse.