Stanford Scientist Creates $5 Chemistry Set Inspired By Music Box

April 9, 2014

Image Credit: Stanford University

[ Watch the Video: The $5 Chemistry Set ]

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports Your Universe Online

A Stanford University professor has won a $50,000 prize for creating a prototype chemistry set that was inspired by and used parts from a toy music box, the California-based university announced on Tuesday.

According to Kwame Opam of The Verge, assistant bioengineering professor Manu Prakash developed a small device that can be programmed to mix precise amounts of chemical fluids and could help address health and water-quality issues in developing countries.

For his efforts, he was awarded $50,000 towards the development of his prototype in The Science Play and Research Kit Competition (SPARK), a contest jointly sponsored by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Society for Science & the Public that challenged participants to reimagine the chemistry set for the 21st century.

Prakash, who was assisted on the project by graduate student George Korir, believes that his chemistry set could be useful in less fortunate parts of the world while also doubling as an educational toy for children.

In one part of our lab weve been focusing on frugal science and democratizing scientific tools to get them out to people around the world who will use them, Prakash told Amy Adams of Stanford News. Id started thinking about this connection between science education and global health. The things that you make for kids to explore science are also exactly the kind of things that you need in the field because they need to be robust and they need to be highly versatile.

The music box that served as the inspiration for the chemistry set was received by Prakashs wife at a workplace Christmas gift exchange one year ago. It used a small hand crank to pull a paper ribbon through a set of pins on concentric disks, and when one of the pins hits a hole in the paper, the disk and pin rotated. This caused another pin to tug on a metal strip in order to produce a sound and ultimately play a song.

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Stanford Scientist Creates $5 Chemistry Set Inspired By Music Box