I am Fionn Ferreira, an Irish teenager. Thank you judges for this honor and giving this award in my hand. I am very delighted to have won $50,000 for my project. My project came about as I was constantly hearing about plastic pollution on the news. And I also see the real effects on our beaches every day. I discovered, to my shock, that at present no filtration(过滤)for microplastics takes place in any European wastewater treatment centers, so I set up my project and started looking for a solution.

Seeing that there was none, I decided to study further, finally finding a way to use the fberofluid(铁磁流体), a liquid which sticks to the plastic allowing it to be removed using magnets(磁体).After over 1,000 tests I have proved that my method would remove 87% or higher of microplastics.

I grew up in West Cork, Ireland. My hometown is surrounded by untouched nature. This has been my first inspiration about how nature works. I soon discovered that science really was in everything. The fact that I lived in such a remote place meant that I had to build my own equipment and lab to do tests and experiments.

Inspired by scientists such as Ben Feringa and his work with organic chemistry and nanotechnology(纳米技术), I would like to study chemistry or chemical engineering when finishing my last year of secondary school. Both of these subjects will be suited to me as I really enjoy problem-solving and experiments.

One of the most valuable rewards from the science fair for me is the opportunity to present my work to a group of professional judges. Winning the prize is a great honor to me as this is a recognition of my project and ideas.

Also, the prize will give my project more attention. There is nothing I would like to see more than my project to be used in removing microplastics in our oceans worldwide.

Nobody ever said science education was easy. Certainly the concepts like quantum mechanics can be hard to grasp. But what really complicates the endeavor is that we're also trying to teach the subject while helping students understand the nature of science itself.

All too often, young people get the impression that science is about learning certain "laws" and then applying them to different situations. Rather, science is the process of building the concepts through the collection of experimental evidence. Let's not call these concepts laws, but models. Science is all about building and testing models.

Of course, we can't start from scratch. If students had to build their own models from the ground up, it would be like trying to learn programming by inventing computers. As Isaac Newton said, we stand on the shoulders of giants. We must go from models built by others.

But there's still another challenge in science education less recognized: Students often enter a course with their own unarticulated ideas about how the world works. We call these "misconceptions" but it's important to realize that these are also models, based on their life experiences, which "make sense" to the students.

What I'd like to suggest is that this actually provides a great way into the adventure of science and an opportunity to meet our objectives as educators. If you can create a situation that challenges students' assumptions and produces conceptual conflict, that's a great opportunity for learning.

Here's an example that I've used on the topic of light rays. I set up a point light source and put a piece of cardboard in front of it. There's a small pinhole in the cardboard and a white screen behind. What do you expect to see? No surprise: A light shining through a pinhole makes a dot on the screen. But what if I have TWO light sources with the same single hole? Many students complain that science is tricky.

OK, that is a problem. The point isn't supposed to be that science is tricky but that learning is tricky. It's hard to change students' ideas, so we deliberately put them in a position to confront their internal model. Here, students have the idea that the spot on the screen is due to the pinhole - a natural conclusion - so one hole means one spot. But actually light travels radially outward from each light source in straight lines. (Check the top view (俯视图)of the two lights, the pinhole, and the screen below.)

But really, the answer is not the point. What I'm saying here is that in education, we set things up so students get it wrong. That's how they learn. Learning requires getting past their own ideas. You can't get physically fit without breaking a sweat and you can't really learn, at a fundamental level, without a little conflict in your head. (477 words)

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It was the summer of 2014 when I was asked whether I wanted to go to Malibu (an island in Canada) with my church to serve the military families. At first, I heard this and thought, "You are asking an eleven-year-old in his last weeks of summer if he wants to go on a trip with his mom to Canada to serve other people? " Of course, I responded with a kind refusal, but my mom found a way to convince me to go.

When we were on the ferry to the island, a thousand thoughts were running through my head, such as "What am I going to do here?" "Am I even going to be useful?" and "Why am I even here?" When we got to the island, I was assigned to the child care. I was actually somewhat excited because my friend said he would help me. The first time I met the kids, I got to know them pretty well. They were all between the ages of four and six. Some of them stayed behaved and a few of them started acting crazy and would even hit and push the other kids.

With those kids, I was very strict, but I still tried to be positive and maintain a smile. After all, they were just innocent kids. In most of the time, I needed to help them with things like laundry and setting tables. Even though it sounded dull, I enjoyed every second of it. One of the things I did in my free time was to play pool. I befriended a few kids there. They were really easy to talk to. Some of the things we talked about were sports, food, video games, and most of all pool.

Even though I was only at Malibu, Canada for one week, I feel like I made spiritual changes in some people's life. You don't have to go above and beyond to make a difference in someone's life. In the end, it all comes down to what way you changed them. It could have been in a spiritual way or a mental way as long as you had a positive effect. So go out and try to make a difference in this world.