Rare air: Wheeling student video on air pollution a national finalist

When teenagers get behind the wheel, they're not thinking about the carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere.

Most teenagers, anyway.

Riley Harvey, a senior at Wheeling High School, is one of the exceptions, and he and like-minded students are behind a video warning peers about the dangers of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases.

The video is one of 10 finalists in a competition sponsored by Samsung asking students to answer the question: “How can science or math help the environment in your community?”

“We wanted to pick a topic a lot of students could relate to,” Harvey said. “We decided a lot of people drive themselves to school when they could car-pool or bike or walk to school.”

Harvey's video is the only finalist from Illinois. The other Wheeling students involved were seniors Jenny Hahn, Adam Rude, Kate Bockey, Jorge Villalobos and Rajarshi Roy.

In the video, the Wheeling students trap exhaust released from a car's tailpipe, eventually measuring 43 grams of carbon dioxide in only 170 liters of air and concluding that car exhaust le ads to global warming.

Just by being a finalist in the video contest, the students have won their school about $50,000 in computer hardware and software, said Lisa del Muro, the Wheeling science teacher who led the project.

If the students win, they'll be flown to New York and earn an additional $155,000 in prizes, she added.

People can check out and vote for the students' video online. Del Muro said online voting will account for 40 percent of the videos' final scores, with votes from a panel of judges accounting for the other 60 percent. The top 10 finalists have their videos posted at www.samsung.com/solvefortomorrow or at Samsung USA's Facebook page under the “Solve” tab. The winner will be announced in late March.