<p>@falcon, the young man you mentioned has a remarkable achievement, but it’s quite inaccurate to say he did it on his own. His father, a civil engineer, was already mentoring him on research using those tubes to detect properties of solutions. This is a family that has a lab in their basement at home. His mother had the time and commitment to literally sleep in a parking garage every night waiting while her son worked in the lab. (Additionally, the faculty mentor he found at Johns Hopkins was willing to assign a postdoctoral fellow to train him and then supportive enough not to throw him out of the lab when he blew up samples in the centrifuge.) I don’t mean to belittle the achievement of this kid, yes he had a good idea to put two bits of technology together to address a problem he was interested in, and yes, he worked extremely hard and successfully created something that works. It’s very impressive for a high school student. But to say he did it with no support, that’s really not true. This kid had a very involved and technically proficient parent who gave him the very specialized training and materials he started with and most likely was discussing the work with him every step of the way, a postdoctoral fellow who was assigned to help him, and a faculty member at one of the best Universities in the world on his team. Not to mention a mother who was willing and able to drop everything else (does she work? does she have young kids or elderly parents to care for?) to taxi him around. Does the OP have parents like that? I’m not saying the OP shouldn’t try or cannot do anything. But please don’t tell her this other student did it all by himself.</p>