NASA is interested - mind blowing!
March 9th 2007 00:24
Signature Tune
From North County News.com
Student's research gets attention
03/07/07
by Bob Allen
Anna Cyganowski, a senior at Notre Dame Preparatory School and one of 300 semifinalists in the nationwide 2007 Intel National Science Talent Search, is preoccupied with tin whiskers.
She's so concerned about tin whiskers, tiny metal filaments that have appeared in the circuitry of NASA space shuttles and caused electrical shorts, that she spent last summer studying them at the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center, in Greenbelt.
Nobody knows exactly what causes tin whiskers to form on certain electrically conductive metal surfaces. That was what the 17-year-old Baldwin resident was trying to find out with the experiments she did as an intern at Goddard.
She hasn't solved the riddle of tin whiskers, but her experiments did earn her semifinalist standing in the science contest. The honor also came with a $1,000 prize for Cyganowski and an additional $1,000 for her school.
In recognition of her achievement, Cyganowski was honored Feb. 5 by County Executive Jim Smith.
"Not only have you yourself excelled, but the impact you've had on others is significant," Smith told Cyganowski during the Feb. 5 ceremony, referring to her as a role model for young women interested in careers in science and technology. "It's had a ripple effect."
In addition to her ongoing studies on tin whiskers, Cyganowski is the founder of her school's robotics club, which now has 22 members. The club builds what she describes as "autonomous Lego robots that are programmed to run themselves." The robots are entered in competitions with similar contraptions built by students in other high school robotics clubs.
Cyganowski also staffs Notre Dame Prep's computer help desk and teaches seventh graders how computers work and how to repair them.
"I've always loved computers since I was 5 and my dad started showing me how to fix them," she said. "I love taking them apart and putting them together again."
It was a couple years ago that Cyganowski's attention turned to tin whiskers.
That's when she first heard of them and discovered that they cause millions of dollars of damage in electrical systems.
She also discovered that NASA was preoccupied with them. Whiskers were found on metal parts taken from the space shuttle Endeavor and also on a metal component that was to be installed in the Hubble Space Telescope.
Why all the fuss about these tiny, electrically conductive crystalline filaments that form on tin, zinc and cadmium surfaces?
That answer is simple. Even though tin whiskers are so small as to be are nearly invisible, they have caused short circuits and temporary shutdowns in electronic systems ranging from pacemakers and communication satellites to wrist watches and nuclear power plants. They have even caused space shuttle electrical circuitry to fail.
Scientists have known about tin whiskers since World War II, when they discovered them on aircraft radio equipment.
But only in recent years, as tin, zinc and cadmium have become widely used substitutes for lead in electronic circuitry, have they become a major hazard.
Yet why and how tin whiskers form is still unknown.
Cyganowski said she had never heard of tin whiskers until two years ago, when she attended a national youth leadership forum on technology at which they were mentioned in passing.
"I actually went up to my room that night and 'Googled' tin whiskers," she said. "NASA/Goddard was the first hit."
Cyganowski wasted little time in applying for an internship at the Greenbelt facility. Last summer, she began experiments with cadmium batteries to learn more about the strange little filaments.
Dr. Henning Leidecker Jr., chief parts engineer in the NASA Office of Logic Design, worked closely with Cyganowski and has high praise for her focus and methodology.
"She's a self-starter," Leidecker said. "She showed up at NASA and said she'd like to learn something about tin whiskers and do something about them. And, by gosh, she did."
"My experiments were a process of data collection to try to figure out what makes them grow," added Cyganowski, who said she's a little overwhelmed by all the attention her research has been getting lately.
Tom Peri, chairman of Notre Dame Prep's science department, taught Cyganowski science when she was a freshman and is her teacher again this year in an advanced placement biology class. Peri, along with Notre Dame Prep's headmistress, Sister Patricia McCarron, also attended the ceremony.
Peri said Cyganowski is not only hard working and unassuming, but also well rounded.
"She's not just talented in one area," he said. "She's got a broad base of information.
"We may have stretched her talents at Notre Dame," Peri said, "but she certainly stretched us, too."
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