TCSE: Ted Corpus Search Engine

Recorded at	December 03, 2016
Event	TED-Ed Weekend
Duration (min:sec)	05:48
Video Type	TED Stage Talk
Words per minute	198.67 fast
Readability (FK)	49.36 difficult
Speaker	Ashton Cofer


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

Ashton Cofer: A plan to recycle the unrecyclable