a Georgia 9th grader is getting national attention for not only winning the annual 3M young scientist challenge but for also inventing a device that could save lives quite simply it prevents people from ingesting pesticides on fruits and vegetables sir shubash is now being called America's Next Top scientist and we're so excited to say here he's with us now 14-year-old sirish subash Shish good morning thank you so much for coming on good morning it's an honor to be here it's an honor for for us as well congratulations on this amazing project I have to ask how
did you come up with it so it all started when I was talking with my mom over some produce that we were washing and my question was why does it matter that we actually wash it and how what sort of an impact does it have on the produce how effective is it so I did some looking into it and I found out that pest said residues are one of a few contaminants that you'll find often on produce and if if we could detect them we could make sure we weren't consuming them because pest side residues
can stay on produce even after multiple rounds of washing so how is this device able to detect the pesticide residue that you just mentioned so it works on a method called spectrometry now what this means is that it uses different ways that light interacts with different chemicals to look for different chemicals on the produce so each chemical reflects different parts or wavelengths of light and that creates a spectral signature which is basically a catalog of what wavelengths are reflected back so pesta scan can look for those wavelengths that are reflected by S set residues on
the produce and we're reading more about this it takes about two seconds to get a result you've done 800 trials someone doesn't win one of the country's Premier School competitions without an early Fascination in science sish what sparked your curiosity when did you notice hey I think I I'm really interested in science this is this was actually a long while back but once I started reading more books my parents actually introduced me to a couple of science books and one thing that I really enjoyed about science was how it connected everything together and I thought
that was really cool I was able to see quite a few more documentaries there was one in particular that really brought me into this because it showed how connected things were from biology to engineering to everything that we do in the real world and that's what really brought me into science I saw it as a really interesting way to satisfy my curiosity I see that and I think you're so cool we know this prize comes with $25,000 how do you plan on spending that prize money so I'm planning on using it mostly for college but
I would like to use it as well to further projects like pesas scan so I can innovate to help solve real world problems you are an incredible young man what do you do for fun sish okay so there's a couple of big things that I do for fun so I like to read a lot so I read science fiction some non-fiction books as well and I enjoy reading I also enjoy Aviation and there's a couple other Hobbies I have as well such as origami yeah origami very cool any good fiction suggestions please send them my
way I'm looking for a good book you've already made a name for yourself especially with publishing two books before you even turned 13 years old what's left to accomplish what's next for America's top scientist yeah so I want to continue developing projects like pesta scan and eventually get them out to the world to the market that's one of my goals for pesta skan to get it out to everyone sish subash we are so excited to talk to you I can't wait to see what you do next thanks for coming on and we know your mom
your family are rightfully so proud of you thank you again thanks for having me of course thanks for you're watching go to join nn.com to find newsnation on your television provider and don't forget to click the red subscribe button below to get more of news nation's fact- driven unbiased coverage
