Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, May 13, 1995 TAG: 9505150038
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE:
DATELINE: DUBLIN LENGTH: Medium
Setul Patel, a 17-year-old senior at Narrows High School, won more than $7,000, a computer and a trip to a national energy lab for his work in finding nonelectric energy sources to run heat pumps.
The award "is certainly the first for Southwest Virginia," and may be the first in the state, said Margaret Duncan, director of the Dublin school.
A second student from the school, Jeff Carpenter, presented his research on using lasers to determine percent solutions at the fair. Carpenter is a 16-year-old junior at Pulaski County High School who placed first in local, regional and state competitions. His project was called "Rayleighscatter: Finding Concentrations and Similarities of a Solution."
Duncan said Patel has taken every class the governor's school offers and excelled in all of them. He will attend the University of Virginia and hopes to become a physician. His project was called "Analysis of Efficiency, Cost and Construction of Solar-Powered Chemical Heat Pumps Using Methanol and Inorganic Salts."
Patel was able to improve his project this year by working with John Dillard, a professor of chemistry at Virginia Tech, who provided equipment and salts. Patel began his project last year.
At the science and engineering fair, held earlier this month in Ontario, Canada, Patel won $5,000 and a Pentium-based computer for his first-place finish in the engineering category, $2,000 for a third-place finish in the global change category, $400 for a first patent award, and a free trip, with a teacher, to a Department of Energy national laboratory to be named later.
Nearly 1,000 students attended the event from 431 affiliated fairs held throughout the United States and in 30 countries. More than 600 awards in 16 scientific categories were presented in Ontario.
by CNB