Google Science Fair 2012... What is your question?

Its time for the second annual Google Science Fair. Last year over 10,000 students submitted 7,500 entries from 90 countries from around the globe. The 2011 winner, American Shree Bose, discovered a way to prevent cancer cells from becoming resistant to the chemotherapy drug, cisplatin. With such amazing entries last year everyone is waiting in excited anticipation for this years entries to start rolling in.

This year Google has partnered with CERN, The LEGO Group, National Geographic and Scientific American. Together they are striving to make the fair even more global then last year. Google Science Fair 2012 can now accept submissions in 13 languages (Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Spanish and Russia). Google plans to recognize 90 regional finalists (30 from the Americas, 30 from the Asia Pacific and 30 from Europe/Middle East/Africa). From those 90 finalists (to be announced in May) 15 will be selected to present their projects live at Google headquarters in Mountain View, California on July 23, 2012, before an international panel of distinguished judges. Winners will be selected in each age category (13-14, 15-16, 17-18) as well as an overall winner.

Scientific American has signed on as a partner this year. Inspired by 2011 finalist Harine Ravichandran’s project, which attempted to solve energy surges in rural villages, the magazine has added an additional award to this years competition. The Scientific American Science in Action award recognize an outstanding project that addresses a social, environmental or health need to make a difference in the lives of a group or community. The winner will also join the 15 finalists at the finals, earn $50,000 and year-long mentorship to make their project goal a reality.

Science fair season might be over for you, or it might be just beginning, all it takes is one moment of curiosity to create the perfect project. So how do you enter? What are the rules? Here is just the basics.

Entries accepted online from January 12 until Sunday, April 1 at 11:59pm GMT.
Entrants must be between 13-18 years old and have parental consent.
Full rules can be found on the Google Science Fair website.

Prizes include (but are not limited to):

$50,000 college scholarship from Google
a 10-day trip to the Galapagos Islands with a National Geographic Explorer
an internship at Google or any one of our partners
a personal Lego color mosaic and Lego Mindstorm set signed by the design team, the CEO and the owner of LEGO

Winning the Google Science Fair has turned regular high school kids into scientific celebrities over the last year. All of their hard work was finally over, but these teens never rested on their laurels, Shree Bose, Naomi Shah and Lauren Hodge met with President Obama, were invited to speak at massive events like TEDx Women and were featured in Wired magazine. Shree, the grand prize winner, was named one of Glamour magazine’s 21 Amazing Young Women of the Year.

Every GeekMom knows that a great project starts with a great question. What’s yours?

Let us at GeekMom know if you or your child are submitting an entry so that we can stand in the background and cheer you on, or contact us if you are interested in some expert advice. We would love to be part of the proud moms who can say “We knew him/her when…”.

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