Middle School Innovators Vie to Be America's Top Young Scientist

"We cannot always build the future for our youth, but we can build our youth for the future," President Franklin D. Roosevelt said at the University of Pennsylvania in 1940.

He would have been proud of the three forward-thinking middle schoolers competing for the chance to win $25,000 this week at the 15th annual Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge in Minnesota.

The theme of the annual competition is finding a solution to everyday problems related to how we live, work or play. Participants had to first submit a video communicating the science behind their invention, which was then reviewed based on creativity, scientific knowledge and presentation. Hundreds of submissions streamed in earlier this year, and only 10 students in grades five through eight were selected as finalists. Read more...