Page 80 - Fall2019

International Science and Engineering Fair
Figure 2. Inder Makin and the ASA award winners.
The first prize of $1,500 was awarded to the student trio, Haruka Hinami, Ayana Miyazaki, and Yui Tamada, Prefec- tural Nagasaki Nishi High School (Nagasaki City, Japan) for their project entitled Novel Subtle Acoustic Communication: Successful Elucidation of the Cryptic Ecology of Runner Plant Bugs (Hallodapus spp.) with Emphasis on Their Stridulatory Mechanisms. Their mentor, Tetsuya Nagashima, was awarded $500 and their school $200. In this unique insect bioacoustics and community science project, the team used several novel practical techniques to harvest sufficient specimens of runner harvest bugs (Hallodapus spp.), localize and study the mor- phology of insect noise-producing structures, and implement a setup for evoking the stridulatory phenomenon among the insects as well as measuring and characterizing the sounds. The team used a microphone pickup with a needle-based taper to capture the faint sounds. The team further went on to study the social impetus for stridulatory events among these runner plant bugs, which apparently are quite common in their city. Finally, from scanning electron microscope images, the team was able to hypothesize the mechanism by which the insects made the sounds. The project abstract is available at ow.ly/G3pv50uqUMd.
The second prize of $1,000 was awarded to Joonyoung Lee and Mincheol Park, Korea Science Academy of Science (Busan, South Korea), for their project entitled SHOWPAM: System of High-Efficiency Ocean Wave Power with Acoustic Metamate- rial. Awards of $250 to their mentor Jongrim Lee and $100 to the school were part of the ASA prize. The group studied the area of power generation from ocean waves to understand the limitations of the current systems, leading to developing higher efficiency ocean wave-to-electrical energy conversion systems. The group’s approach investigated the possibility of amplifying the ocean wave by designing a spatial structure to amplify the surface ocean wave, coined SHOWPAM. The group refined their geometric design for performance using COMSOL and then tested their prototypes in a self-designed wave-generating test bed. Prototypes were built as controls, and the power conversion efficiency was measured and com- pared to show a greatly increased (225%) power conversion using their SHOWPAM prototype. The project abstract is available at ow.ly/Sz0250uqUO6.
The third prize of $600 was awarded to Sauhaarda Chowdhuri, Westview High School (San Diego, CA), with the mentor Dom
80 | Acoustics Today | Fall 2019