Taipei, Oct. 31 (CNA) A Taiwanese teenager won two awards at the 2022 Mostratec International Science and Technology fair held in Brazil last week, according to a press release on Sunday from the National Taiwan Science Education Center.
Chang Yu-yi (張又懿), a 17-year-old homeschooled student from Taoyuan, won first place in the "Planetary and Earth Sciences and Mathematics and Physics" category and a Casio special award for her study, "Don't Dance Inside the House: The Most Safety (sic) Building Against Fire and Smoke."
Citing statistics, Chang said indoor fires account for a majority of fire accidents in Taiwan and are often made worse by poor structural design and people opening windows or doors.
The work addressed the relationship between combustion and the number and size of window and door openings by applying thermodynamics, fluid mechanics and theory of structures.
Based on the stack effect and countercurrent smoke layer effect, she conducted an experiment with acrylic boards to simulate an indoor fire, while examining changes in the density of smoke as well as the height and temperature of the fire.
To Chang's surprise, more "door/window" openings did not equal less fire as widely believed. Indeed, the influx of oxygen from outside even caused the fire to become more intense.
Chang became interested in the subject following a fire in her neighborhood when she was younger. "I learned from the accident that fire can be very dangerous, but it also motivated me to learn more about it," she said.
In 2020, as a junior high school student, Chang and a partner Wu Yen-yu (吳硯宇) were instructed by Tai Ming-fong (戴明鳳), a physics professor at National Tsing Hua University, who teaches on a program for home schooled students, to conduct a fire-related research project called "Fire Dancing: Influence of Flame Surrounding Structure on Flame and Airflow" for which they won the top award at the Taiwan Science Exploration Fair in the junior high school category.
The study Chang presented in Brazil originally won second place at the Taiwan International Science Fair (TISF) 2022 earlier this year, before being selected to represent Taiwan at the Mostratec event
Touting the outstanding performances of Taiwanese students as an indication of Taiwan's research excellence, Director of National Taiwan Science Education Center Liu Huoo-chin (劉火欽) said it is a special experience for local students to participate in such fairs, where they get to learn from the judges and foreign innovators while creating a good impression of Taiwan.
Mostratec is an annual event held by Fundação Liberato in Novo Hamburgo, Rio Grande do Sul State, Brazil. Its official website describes it as "Latin-America's biggest pre-college science and technology fair."
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the fair took place virtually in 2020 and 2021.
Monstratec ran from Oct. 25-27, with 666 works submitted from eight countries, including Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, Paraguay, Portugal, Peru and Taiwan. Only one work was submitted from Taiwan.
One winning work from Monstratec will be selected to attend the TISF 2023.
