Each month, iParenting.com spotlights a teen who inspires and moves us, who embodies the qualities that we all admire in a person, a friend, and a son or a daughter. Above all, the Teen of the Month is dedicated to making a positive mark on the planet. Rich or poor, famous or not, the Teen of the Month shines as an example of what today's teens have to offer.

July's Teen of the Month is Shannon McClintock, teen scientist and grand prize winner in the sixth annual Discovery Channel Young Scientist Challenge.

As a young child, Shannon McClintock loved to play with Lego® bricks, building ramps and bridges. She didn't realize her favorite pastime was actually science. To her, it was just fun.

In middle school, McClintock lost interest in science, largely because it wasn't very interesting anymore. However, an eighth grade curriculum supplement required her to enter a science fair, and trying to come up with a topic made her realize how all-encompassing – and fascinating – science is. From that rather innocuous beginning, McClintock's rekindled interest in science led her to a series of competitions that culminated in her winning the grand prize in the sixth annual Discovery Channel Young Scientist Challenge. In addition to receiving $15,000 toward her college tuition, she received a mission: spreading the word that girls and science are a natural team.

Building Blocks
McClintock, a ninth grader at Scripps Ranch High School in San Diego, Calif., says that she was a typical little girl who liked Barbie® dolls and other girl stuff, but she also loved to play with building toys, which are often thought of as traditional "boy" toys. Her parents, Nancy and Rick, always encouraged her to express herself with imagination – whether it was through building or make-believing.

"My mom was a teacher until she decided to stay home and just be my mom, and my dad is a systems analyst," says McClintock. "I guess because of their own backgrounds, they never felt I had to be limited. They always encouraged me to try anything and told me that I could achieve anything I wanted."

As McClintock got older, she lost some of her early interest in science, partly because of an absence of what clearly defined science. By the time she was in middle school, her conception of scientists consisted solely of men in white suits with test tubes and beakers. At the same time, the science curriculum was pretty off-putting with its emphasis on memorization rather than on the type of hands-on creation that makes up the work of many real scientists.

The fateful eighth grade science fair project changed everything. She finally settled on an idea that had nothing to do with test tubes and beakers; rather, it harked back to her early love of "boys' toys." Hearing her describe the creative process of elimination is a look at the scientific mind at its best.

"I spent seven hours on a Sunday morning trying to come up with an idea for the science fair," she says. "I really wanted to do something that would help society and something that was related to improving transportation, because I see that as an area where there's a lot of room for improvement. At first, I came up with all these ideas for streamlining boats that I couldn't put into effect. Then I remembered my grandpa telling me about the sanders he had on his car as a young man. When it was icy, the sanders would drop sand on the road in front of the tires. However, he told me that the sand didn't work very well, so he replaced it with chicken grit.

“I found out that this method is still used on some trains because when the train starts out, the wheels will often slip. It also helps with climbing hills and decreases the danger of the train sliding back. I wondered if maybe I, like my grandpa, could find something that worked better for trains than sand."

Dubbing her project "The Little Engine That Could," McClintock set about trying to figure out how to test her hypothesis. She didn't have much access to real trains, so she originally planned to use model trains. She soon realized the impracticality of that idea – because of the scaling issue, the grains of sand were like rocks to the small trains. Then she got the idea of using two flywheels. One represented the train's wheels and the other the tracks.

In the end, she discovered the products that worked better than sand were not as cost-effective. However, she also discovered that the type of sand most often used for this application, silica, can cause respiratory disease. Her ultimate premise became an issue of workplace safety. In other words, garnet, which works better than sand but is more expensive, could be used in place of silica when employees or other people were around.

Building On
After winning her middle school science fair, McClintock went on to take her project to several other competitions where she did well, winning a trip to Space Camp, among other awards. But it was her first win, the middle school competition, that made her eligible to enter the Discovery Channel Young Scientist Competition, along with 7,500 other middle school students from across the country.

Those original 7,500 were whittled down to 400 semifinalists. In order to move on to the next round, those 400 had to present materials showing that they understand the scientific process and could explain it as well. McClintock survived that round to become one of 40 finalists.

Along with the other 39 finalists, McClintock went to Washington, D.C., for the final competition, which consisted of a series of team challenges and oral presentations. To commemorate the 100th year since his "year of wonders" revolutionized the study of physics, the theme of the challenge was Einstein's theories. The competition had several goals: to test the participants’ general scientific knowledge; to test their understanding of, and ability to use, scientific processes; to test their abilities to work in a team structure; and to ascertain if they could articulate their results and share them with observers in a clear, concise manner.

In the end, McClintock wowed the judges with her superior abilities in each of those areas and was named the winner. Now, in addition to traveling and speaking on the subject of science, she's become a poster child of sorts for girls in science, an almost inevitable outcome since her win came not long before the controversial remarks made by Harvard University President Lawrence Summers who suggested that women lack the ability to excel in science. As McClintock points out, since more than half of the 40 semi-finalists for the Young Scientist's competition were girls, Summers’ observations simply don't compute. She also worries that similar mindsets will discourage girls from even trying.

"Girls don't really realize what's available to them if they have an interest in science," she says. "There's an incredible amount of help in the form of special programs and scholarships that can get them all the way through the process of finding a career in a science field."

McClintock's not sure if she's going to pursue a career in science, but since she's just a freshman in high school she has plenty of time to decide. Right now she's thinking she'd like to publish a novel, write a musical, become a lawyer and do something in the performing arts. A stretch? Maybe, but look what she's already achieved.

Want to see more?

• February 2005's Teen of the Month, Thomas Rancour
• January 2005's Teen of the Month, Jerry Guo
• August 2004's Teen of the Month, Linzy Hildreth
• Talk about it!
  

  

  About the Author: Kelly Burgess is a senior contributing editor for iParenting Media.