Two Forest Ridge students named regional winners in science program

Published 3:49 pm Friday, March 26, 2010

Two 7th grade students from the Forest Ridge School of the Sacred Heart in Bellevue have been named regional winners in the 2010 Toshiba/NSTA ExploraVision Program, the world’s largest K-12 student science competition.

The students, Anika Patel and Angela Riggins, envisioned EPPIC, a futuristic printer system that would help conserve the world’s resources by recycling printed paper and ink.

The pair will be honored Tuesday, March 30, at the school where Toshiba will present their award and the students will discuss their innovative idea for a future technology. Sara Konek is the students’ coach.

They now move on to the nation round of the competition.

A total of 13,947 students participated in this year’s Toshiba/National Science Teachers Association ExploraVision program.

The ExploraVision competition asks students to imagine ideas for future technologies that could exist in 20 years. The team is now creating a web site to be submitted for national judging in May.

Their project, EPPIC – Ecological paper Printer and Ink Collector – is a futuristic printer system that would help conserve the world’s resources by recycling printed paper and ink, removing the ink from used paper and reusing it to make new prints. Key to the innovation is a new type of ink technology that would stick to paper, yet also have the ability to release from it when necessary.

The students looked to the world of nature for their inspiration; specifically the Gecko, which has the ability to “stick” and “unstick” its feet.