By Devin Powell
WASHINGTON — Forty finalists from this year’s Intel Science Talent Search, the nation’s long-running precollege science competition, chatted up hundreds of visitors who dropped by the National Geographic Society on March 11 to learn more about the students’ research.
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Vying for $630,000 in awards, the projects on display tackled real-world problems and contributed knowledge to fields ranging from mathematics to psychology.
Oliver Quintero of The Woodlands, Texas, for example, has created a new substance that promises to increase the voltage of lithium-ion batteries. “My goal is make a battery that can compete with fossil fuels,” said Quintero.