TCSE: Ted Corpus Search Engine

Recorded at	December 03, 2016
Event	TED-Ed Weekend
Duration (min:sec)	05:52
Video Type	TED Stage Talk
Words per minute	196.69 fast
Readability (FK)	49.36 difficult
Speaker	Ashton Cofer


1	00:03	It was just an ordinary Saturday.
2	00:05	My dad was outside mowing the lawn,
3	00:08	my mom was upstairs folding laundry,
4	00:10	my sister was in her room doing homework
5	00:12	and I was in the basement playing video games.
6	00:15	And as I came upstairs to get something to drink,
7	00:18	I looked out the window
8	00:19	and realized that there was something that I was supposed to be doing,
9	00:22	and this is what I saw.
10	00:26	No, this wasn't my family's dinner on fire.
11	00:29	This was my science project.
12	00:32	Flames were pouring out,
13	00:34	smoke was in the air
14	00:35	and it looked like our wooden deck was about to catch fire.
15	00:38	I immediately started yelling.
16	00:40	My mom was freaking out,
17	00:42	my dad ran around to put out the fire
18	00:44	and of course my sister started recording a Snapchat video.
19	00:48	(Laughter)
20	00:50	This was just the beginning of my team's science project.
21	00:54	My team is composed of me and three other students
22	00:56	who are here in the audience today.
23	00:58	We competed in FIRST LEGO League
24	01:00	which is an international LEGO robotics competition for kids,
25	01:04	and in addition to a robotics game,
26	01:06	we also worked on a separate science project,
27	01:08	and this was the project that we were working on.
28	01:11	So the idea for this project all started
29	01:13	when a few months earlier,
30	01:14	a couple of my teammates took a trip to Central America
31	01:17	and saw beaches littered with Styrofoam,
32	01:20	or expanded polystyrene foam.
33	01:22	And when they came back and told us about it,
34	01:24	we really started thinking about the ways in which we see Styrofoam every day.
35	01:28	Get a new flat-screen TV?
36	01:30	You end up with a block of Styrofoam bigger than the TV itself.
37	01:33	Drink a cup of coffee?
38	01:35	Well, those Styrofoam coffee cups are sure going to add up.
39	01:38	And where do all these items go after their one-time use?
40	01:41	Since there aren't any good existing solutions for used Styrofoam,
41	01:45	almost all of them end up right in the landfill,
42	01:47	or the oceans and beaches,
43	01:49	taking over 500 years to degrade.
44	01:51	And in fact, every year, the US alone
45	01:54	produces over two billion pounds of Styrofoam,
46	01:56	filling up a staggering 25 percent of landfills.
47	01:59	So why do we have these ghost accumulations of Styrofoam waste?
48	02:03	Why can't we just recycle them like many plastics?
49	02:07	Well, simply put, recycled polystyrene is too expensive
50	02:10	and potentially contaminated,
51	02:12	so there is very little market demand for Styrofoam that has to be recycled.
52	02:16	And as a result, Styrofoam is considered a nonrenewable material,
53	02:19	because it is neither feasible nor viable to recycle polystyrene.
54	02:24	And in fact, many cities across the US
55	02:26	have even passed ordinances
56	02:28	that simply ban the production of many products containing polystyrene,
57	02:31	which includes disposable utensils,
58	02:33	packing peanuts, takeout containers
59	02:36	and even plastic beach toys,
60	02:38	all products that are very useful in today's society.
61	02:41	And now France has become the first country
62	02:43	to completely ban all plastic utensils,
63	02:45	cups and plates.
64	02:47	But what if we could keep using Styrofoam
65	02:50	and keep benefiting from its cheap, lightweight, insulating
66	02:54	and excellent packing ability,
67	02:55	while not having to suffer from the repercussions
68	02:58	of having to dispose of it?
69	02:59	What if we could turn it into something else that's actually useful?
70	03:03	What if we could make the impossible possible?
71	03:07	My team hypothesized that we could use the carbon that's already in Styrofoam
72	03:11	to create activated carbon,
73	03:13	which is used in almost every water filter today.
74	03:16	And activated carbon works by using very small micropores
75	03:19	to filter out contaminants from water or even air.
76	03:23	So we started out by doing a variety of heating tests,
77	03:26	and unfortunately, we had many failures.
78	03:30	Literally, nothing worked.
79	03:32	Besides my dad's grill catching on fire,
80	03:35	most of our samples vaporized into nothing,
81	03:37	or exploded inside expensive furnaces,
82	03:40	leaving a horribly sticky mess.
83	03:43	In fact, we were so saddened by our failures that we almost gave up.
84	03:47	So why did we keep trying
85	03:49	when all the adults said it was impossible?
86	03:51	Well, maybe it's because we're kids. We don't know any better.
87	03:55	But the truth is, we kept trying because we thought it was still possible.
88	03:58	We knew that if we were successful,
89	04:00	we would be helping the environment and making the world a better place.
90	04:04	So we kept trying
91	04:05	and failing
92	04:07	and trying
93	04:09	and failing.
94	04:10	We were so ready to give up.
95	04:13	But then it happened.
96	04:14	With the right temperatures, times and chemicals,
97	04:17	we finally got that successful test result
98	04:19	showing us that we had created activated carbon from Styrofoam waste.
99	04:23	And at that moment, the thing that had been impossible
100	04:26	all of a sudden wasn't.
101	04:28	It showed us that although we had many failures at the beginning,
102	04:31	we were able to persevere through them to get the test results that we wanted.
103	04:34	And moreover, not only were we able to create activated carbon
104	04:37	for purifying water,
105	04:39	but we were also able to reduce Styrofoam waste,
106	04:41	solving two global problems with just one solution.
107	04:44	So from then on, we were inspired to take our project further,
108	04:47	performing more tests to make it more effective
109	04:50	and testing it in real world situations.
110	04:52	We then proceeded to receive funding
111	04:54	from the NSTA's eCYBERMISSION STEM-in-Action program
112	04:57	sponsored by the US Army,
113	04:59	as well as FIRST Global Innovation Awards
114	05:01	sponsored by XPRIZE.
115	05:03	And we were also honored
116	05:04	with the Scientific American Innovator Award
117	05:07	from Google Science Fair.
118	05:09	And using these funds, we plan to file a full patent on our process
119	05:12	and to continue to work on our project.
120	05:15	So yes, although we started with catching my dad's grill on fire
121	05:19	and failing so many times that we almost quit,
122	05:21	it was well worth it when we look back at it now.
123	05:24	We took a problem that many people said was impossible
124	05:27	and we made it possible,
125	05:28	and we persevered when it looked like nothing that we did would work.
126	05:31	We learned that you can't have success
127	05:34	without a little,
128	05:35	or a lot, of failure.
129	05:38	So in the future, don't be afraid if your grill goes up in flames,
130	05:41	because you never know when your idea might just catch fire.
131	05:46	Thank you.
132	05:47	(Applause)

Ashton Cofer: A plan to recycle the unrecyclable