Libertyville student earns award in Discovery Channel challenge

The most valuable lesson 13-year-old Gokul Krishnan of Libertyville says he learned from The Discovery Channel's Young Scientist Challenge was patience and dealing with disappointment.

The three-day contest drew 40 of the brightest young scientific minds in the country to Washington, D.C., where the results were announced Wednesday night. Finalists were chosen from among more than 79,000 middle school students nationwide.

The title of "America's Top Young Scientist" along with a $20,000 college scholarship went to a 11-year-old boy from Cortland, N.Y. But Krishnan didn't walk away empty-handed.

He won a trip to New York City to study the architecture and how the city is designed with Danny Forster, the host of The Discovery Channel's "Build It Bigger" TV show.

"I'm really looking forward to it," said Krishnan in a telephone interview. "It's pretty exciting I think, and it will be one-of-a-kind experience."

Another Illinois contender, Prem Thottumkara of Macomb, won the "Emerging Networks' U.S. Space and Rocket Center" prize. He will attend Space Camp or the Aviation Challenge in Huntsville, Ala.

On Sunday, Krishnan presented the findings of his seventh-grade science project growing cells in solutions of varying acidities and alkalinities before hundreds of people, including real scientists, at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History.

The young scientists were then broken up into teams for two days of experiments and challenges.

Krishnan was awarded for his patience carrying out the challenges and willingness to start over after trial and error. He laughingly recalled his first challenge, which ended disastrously.

Krishnan and his team built a mini green house with a block of ice inside and attempted to fill it with carbon dioxide from a fire extinguisher.

"We used a fire extinguisher to represent how increasing (carbon dioxide) levels alter the speed at which glaciers melt," said the Oak Grove School eighth-grader. "When we were doing it, the fire extinguisher was completely pressurized, so we just blew up the experiment. We had fun with that anyway."

The experiment sparked Krishnan's interest in learning about the green house gas and how it affects daily living and the human body. He said he learned a lot about green chemistry, the earth and about the need for a solution to global warming.

Yet, the best part of the contest was meeting so many bright young students, he said.

"I just had a blast," he said. "It was like really fun. I'm probably not going to be able to see these people."