Oyon Ganguli next to a prototype of his invention, "The Cleaner." The 9-year-old Fitzgerald student won the national Mighty Minds contest with his invention. Courtesy photo.
Oyon Ganguli next to a prototype of his invention, “The Cleaner.” The 9-year-old Fitzgerald student won the national Mighty Minds contest with his invention. Courtesy photo.
(Diya TV) — Oyon Ganguli, a nine-year-old third-grader at Fitzgerald Elementary School in Waltham, Mass. recently emerged victorious in the Mighty Minds Contest, a national youth inventors competition jointly run by the National Inventors Hall of Fame and Camp Invention, a youth educational summer camp.
Ganguli’s winning invention was a prototype of a shower that filters and recycles water. He fittingly named the device “The Cleaner,” and developed the device with the help of his friend, Mateo Rosado.
Ganguli, who is the grandson of awarding-winning Bengali novelist Sunil Gangopadhyay, told a local Waltham newspaper he came up with the idea after watching a video of someone’s ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. He thought it was a waste of water because a “10-minute shower wastes 50 gallons of water.”
The basic idea of “The Cleaner” involves recycling and reusing water that normally runs down the drain while taking a shower. The water is filtered by separate levels of gravel, sand and charcoal, and is gathered in a storage tank before being ultimately pumped back up for reuse. The device comes equipped with a door which allows the filter to be removed and cleaned when necessary.
For his winning efforts, Ganguli will be rewarded with a two-day trip to Washington D.C. and a trip to the National Inventors Hall of Fame, where he’ll be promptly introduced to some of the brightest young inventors in the country. He will be included in a ceremony along with 16 other inventors whom are being inducted into the hall. Some of this year’s honorees include the inventors of electronic ink and pioneers of the Internet.
The youngster is already planning his next invention, which he calls “The Space Cleaner.”
“It’s a solar-powered robot with one arm that melts space junk and the other arm vacuums up the melted liquid.”
Ganguli’s long-term goals are to become an inventor, work for Lego, or work for Mojang, the video game company responsible for the mega-hit game Minecraft.
