Ohio kids show creations before national competition
Each time her grandpa tried to inject a vial of insulin into his body, his pen’s plunger couldn’t reach every drop of the lifesaving solution. He had to throw the rest away.
It was frustrating because those traces can add up to hundreds of dollars wasted, which is difficult for those who lack health insurance, as he once did.
So when 11-year-old Makiyla Carrico had to create a problem-solving invention for a school competition, it didn’t take her long to think of one.
Her solution: The You Get It All insulin plunger, a device she designed to expel the last drops of insulin from pen cartridges. The Columbus student created it by modifying an existing glass plunger: She heated it by placing it in boiling water and then reshaped it using metal tools.
“It makes a huge difference, because for some people, those wasted units could give them another four or five days of insulin,” said Makiyla, now a sixthgrader at Dominion Middle School in Clintonville.
Makiyla hopes to obtain a patent for the device and help people like her classmate, Honesty, who gives herself insulin every day before lunch.
Makiyla’s idea won the top prize at Ohio’s Invention Convention in July, including $2,500 in a college-saving plan that she hopes to use for veterinary school someday.
It also landed her a spot in a national contest at the Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation in Dearborn, Michigan, this spring. Ohio will send more than 100 qualifying students to the competition. Many, including Makiyla, are raising money for their trip.
Twenty national-qualifying students, including Makiyla, displayed their creations Wednesday in the Statehouse Rotunda for an early celebration of Kid Inventors’ Day, which is Thursday.
Some ideas found simple solutions to students’ everyday concerns, such as a device that attaches to desks to hold pencils. Other inventions were more high-tech, including an alarm system that sounds if a vehicle without a valid permit uses a handicapped parking spot.
The Invention League hosts Ohio’s free program, which started in 1993. About 4,000 students from 70 districts participate.
Although not every student is likely to become an inventor, designer or scientist, the experience helps students learn valuable skills such as teamwork, problem-solving, public speaking and creative thinking, said Abby Fisher, the Invention League’s program director.
The program gives them an opportunity to examine challenges in their everyday lives and find a solution, she said.
“It doesn’t have to be a robot, or a big, advanced thing,” Fisher said. “Inventions are the things we use every day.”
Often, it takes perseverance to perfect an idea.
That was the case for 11-year-old Claire Rhodes, a fifth-grader at Worthington’s Liberty Elementary School. She won the Most Visionary Award at the national competition last year for her Toiletizer number 2, an automatic hand-sanitizing dispenser built into a toilet handle.
She had first submitted the idea as a second-grader, but with a manual pump, and it didn’t advance far. This iteration, however, attracted the attention of GeorgiaPacific, a leading producer of bathroom products, which invited her to tour its innovation lab in Wisconsin.
Claire’s experience inspired sister Grace, a first-grader, to join the competition. Now, the 6-year-old is headed to the national competition with her Play-doh Saver, a vacuum that sucks air out of containers to keep doughy creations soft longer.
“I’ve learned that you have to keep trying, even if you fail,” Claire said.