This is cool and this kid is obviously very smart and precocious, but I bought a lead test kit for under 10 bucks when I was concerned about the paint in my house.
Winning a science fair, great. Scholarship, great. Breathless articles about how this kid is changing the world? Probably setting them up for failure.
edit: valid point that testing for lead in water is a much lower threshold than testing for lead in paint. I remain skeptical of the news coverage.
Testing for lead paint is not the same as testing for lead in water.
There are test strips for lead testing water, but they're unreliable, unregulated, and not particularly trustworthy. The only great option right now is to call a lab who does water testing and work with them to send in a sample and have it tested via a method like induced plasma mass spectrometry.
Unfortunately many of these labs aren't interested in working with individuals who will only send one or two samples. They prefer to work with companies that will send them hundreds of thousands of samples. Even if you found one willing to work with you, their business processes involve fax machines, invoices, and talking to sales people on the phone.
(Related: That's why I started a company called http://www.testyourwaterforlead.com. We started a company and partnered with a lab, we let you order online, pay with a credit card, and we deal with the lab to help you avoid the hassle.)
This seems amazing but you need to have your order form automatically redirect to https. This is a really big deal. I almost didn't purchase because of this just so you know. Sure I can type the extra 's' in myself but 99% of your customers aren't going to do that. Even if you aren't worried about the security issues because you use stripe, your customers are going to get "don't enter credit card info on sites like this" alerts from most browsers (chrome told me not to buy). Please enable a redirect now.
I've personally been moving to an "everything is on HTTPS" model now for anything new I build. Just do a redirect for everything that comes in over http:// to https://.
Service looks awesome, but I wish you guys would use HTTPS on the checkout page (or even better, the entire site!). Let's Encrypt can give you a certificate for free: https://letsencrypt.org/getting-started/
Yup! There are a number of great cities that offer free lead testing services. Unfortunately, it seems to be the exception - not the norm. And often these aren't the places that need it the most.
Also, using city provided services can 6-8 weeks to get results. In an experiment I did with one city's free testing service, you had to call them to place your order. I got a voicemail. It took 4 months to get a call back.
We provide results in less than 2 weeks from when you ship your water sample off to the lab.
Another option: I sent my home water to a labs (http://www.karlabs.com/) they were happy to work with individuals and even have a test kit to facilitate.
Where I live, it's easy. Don't try calling a lab -- call an environmental testing service instead. IIRC the cost was about $40 when I took the sample myself.
A cheaper kit would be nice if I wanted to take a bunch of samples to estimate how far from the tap the lead source was, though.
I bought a lead test kit for under 10 bucks when I was concerned about the paint in my house.
Hmm. Of her device, the article says:
The result is Tethys, a sensor-based device designed to detect lead in water faster than other techniques currently on the market.
So have you considered the possibility that her device works differently (and perhaps better) than yours? You seem to be basically knocking her innovation, based on the fact that you once used a device that was "similar" in some way.
Have you considered the possibility that is doesn't? and that a successful product on the market deserves more benefit of the doubt than a kid's science fair project?
Usually what happens in these stories is that a kid makes something that is a pale imitation of current standards, and the parents use their industry connections to get a PR blast about their awesome kid, that gets the kid a leg up in college or getting a job, and the 'invention' is forgotten.
> Usually what happens in these stories is that a kid makes something that is a pale imitation of current standards, and the parents use their industry connections to get a PR blast about their awesome kid, that gets the kid a leg up in college or getting a job, and the 'invention' is forgotten.
I think what more often happens is one of the parents are almost entirely responsible for the project, and the kid understands it well but had little to do with its creation/invention/discovery.
If not, then it's quite a coincidence that most of the kids in these stories just happen to have a parent who works in the same field their project was exploring.
Then the parents use their connections to generate news stories about it. It works because these are harmless fluff pieces, and anyone casting doubt on the work of a supposed child is viewed as a cynical curmudgeon, so they mostly go uncontested.
That gets them into a better college, then the project is forgotten and the kid does average from there on out.
I remember a particularly egregious example of this from a few years ago, something about a 9-year-old raising millions of dollars and digging thousands of water wells in Sub-Saharan Africa. Clearly this is BS, but what kind of monster would point out the absurdity of that?
These stories are pretty much always PR tactics by wealthy and/or connected parents to boost the profile of their kid.
I think what more often happens is one of the parents are almost entirely responsible for the project, and the kid understands it well but had little to do with its creation/invention/discovery. If not, then it's quite a coincidence that most of the kids in these stories just happen to have a parent who works in the same field their project was exploring.
I don't understand, why can't the parents be helping and mentoring their kids, without necessarily doing the work for them?
I'm a son of two voice actors, and have done some voice acting myself as a 12-year-old. No, it wasn't a coincidence, but I also guarantee you that my parents didn't act on my behalf! I just, you know, learned from them.
Right, neither was I a great voice actor, I never did any characters more important than "Student #4". And I think it's reasonable to be skeptical of the story. But the argument presented above is absurd.
Reminds me of [1]. It's tech's equivalent of the crazy mother pushing her children into beauty pageants. It should not be applauded (in many circumstances).
A lead paint test kit is not the same product as a lead water test.
Lead based paint has 5000 ppm (parts per million) of lead [1]
Water is considered unsafe at levels over over 15 ppb (parts per (billion) [2]
So her test kit is orders of magnitude more sensitive than a lead paint test kit, it's not even in the same ballpark. (if you're standing at home plate and her test kit is at first base, then the lead paint test kit would be over 5000 miles away)
Sure, I'd be happy to, I thought LoC was only used as a unit of measurement on Slashdot.
The LoC holds around 24M cataloged books [1] in its collections.
So the difference between a lead paint detection kit and this project is like the difference between the LoC and a single bookshelf of 72 books.
Or, if you prefer bigger numbers, the LoC has around 540 miles of shelf space [2], so if you laid out all the shelves end to end, it's like the difference between the shelves of the LoC versus shelves that span 180 million miles (greater than the distance between Mars and the Sun [3])
Usually what happens in these stories is that a kid makes something that is a pale imitation of current standards, and the parents use their industry connections to get a PR blast about their awesome kid, that gets the kid a leg up in college or getting a job, and the 'invention' is forgotten.
Sure, but what's wrong with that? It's a little unrealistic to expect an 11 year old girl to productize an invention and bring it to market -- she'd have to team up with a schoolmate who is a budding patent attorney to have any hope of doing so without outside funding.
The nice thing about stories like this is that it helps gives inspiration to other young budding scientists.
* You teach the child dishonesty (taking credit for someone elses work can terminate your academic career).
* In this particular case, the child becomes the face of a marketing campaign (that's her actual contribution: selling a product).
* Stories like this one put pressure on other children because their parents buy it hook line and sinker and want the same for their children.
> Usually what happens in these stories is that a kid makes something that is a pale imitation of current standards, and the parents use their industry connections to get a PR blast about their awesome kid, that gets the kid a leg up in college or getting a job, and the 'invention' is forgotten.
That's almost what happened with Theranos, but we forgot to forget the "invention".
Have you considered the possibility that is doesn't?
The thing is, I wasn't making any assertions (or counter-assertions) about the original storyline. The person I was responding to did, in the form of, basically, "But there was already a similar-sounding product on the market, wasn't there? Therefore this kid couldn't possibly have come up with anything all that novel or interesting."
Which to my ears sounds like an unsupported inference.
Oh, I wasn't, outside of my small town. I did extremely well on standardized tests, is all. But I still got the "You need to go cure cancer" comments. Youthful insecurity made me latch on to any source of validation, and soon you have someone who lives under the premise that they have to be extremely successful to be a worthy human being.
My nephew was just born with a trisomy similar to Down syndrome. If I can make his life better, I will count mine a success.
Winning a science fair, great. Scholarship, great. Breathless articles about how this kid is changing the world? Probably setting them up for failure.
edit: valid point that testing for lead in water is a much lower threshold than testing for lead in paint. I remain skeptical of the news coverage.