Mushrooms that give light and capture fog to fight drought: 5 ideas proposed by young people to improve Chile

It is 9:30 a.m. on Friday, November 15. From the beginning, 19 students Chileans prepare their tables and wait with a smile on everyone who approaches them : they can’t wait to say it how they came up with the idea to solve the problems that affect today Pepper , such as fires, power outages, lack of inclusion, drought or misinformation.

The 19 young people are divided into five groups and wear colorful t-shirts that differentiate them.

And that’s it Each group has a finalist project which competes for the grand prize of the competition organized by Samsung And Digital country -called Solve for tomorrow 2024 — which sought the best solutions among more than 1,000 projects presented in public schools in 16 regions of the country.

Magda Grunwaldt, Marketing Manager at Samsung Chile, tells The Third that the 5 finalist ideas of the competition are the result of a program where they help students develop methodologies to solve problems.

“We teach them to prioritize and get to the root of problems to come up with a solution. And also how technology can bring them closer to the result. This is how we shape their projects and support them all year round. “We want to help them become great professionals. »

What do young people propose to solve the problems in Chile?

Francisca Aguayo and Agustina Fuentevilla, second-year students from the Santo Tomás school in Puerto Montt, Los Lagos region, proposed deal with power outages and help those living in areas where electricity does not reach with a curious project.

It is about generate electrical energy from the symbiosis between fungi and cyanobacteria.

The two young women and their teacher, Erwin Yañez, who adopted the name Electromushroomsexpressed that their main motivation is “wanting to help others.” In my case, I have a family in the countryside who have no electricity, no electrical wiring reaches them. “So we thought about how to give them this resource and we came up with the idea of ​​using lichens.”

They also seek to help electrodependent people in the event of massive and prolonged power outages.

Sayen Cáceres, Martina Ortíz, Nhadya Contreras, Antonella Aldunate and Josefa Plaza, third-year students at Liceo Bicentenario Vallenar, in the Atacama region, tell The Third that They live in an area threatened by the severe drought affecting the country.

This is why they designed panels, similar to solar panels, but instead of capturing light, they trap fog which turns into water. This would be particularly useful in areas where it does not rain.

These panels are made from local materials, such as copper, and can benefit rural and urban areas with difficulty accessing drinking water.

“We are motivated to share our ideas, to let people know that there may be unconventional solutions to the problems they face. “Not everyone has the same resources to get what we need, and water is one of the most essential things to human life. » says the group of students, baptized as Fog sensors and whose director professor is Juan Pablo Córdova.

After witnessing for several years the intense fires in the Valparaíso region, among others, the students Joaquín Olea, Martín Lagos, Jorge Lepiqueo and Estefanía Brito, accompanied by their teacher Cristian Hormazabal, decided to get to work and create, with Arduino technology, a tool capable of preventing fires.

Young people from the Higher Institute of Commerce No. 2 Joaquín Vera Morales in Santiago, Metropolitan Region, proposed a way to predict fires using an antenna that detects the threat before the fire spreads.

Furthermore, as the group, nicknamed programmerthis antenna has the capacity to activate a real-time alert thanks to its advanced sensors that capture not only smoke, but also temperature changes and even gases, which is invisible to the human eye.

“We are young and, when we are adults, we want to have a better future, a better ecosystem and to be able to breathe cleaner air. The fact that a forest fire occurs every year worries us,” the students say. The Third.

They also add that “I hope those who make decisions have more trust in young minds. We have a lot of potential because we think a lot about our future. “We want to preserve the present.”

“It is not possible that there are forest fires every year, that people lose their homes, that there are victims, that so many people die. »

The team NeuroBeethoven, composed of Antonia Medina, Nicole Daza, Vicente Soto and Martín Astorga, students of the Manuel Bulnes high school in the Ñuble region, accompanied by their teacher Rodrigo Henríquez, is on a mission to solve one of the many aspects of Chile’s inclusion problems.

In particular, they want Ensure that people with hearing impairments can listen to music, since it is a fundamental action not only for entertainment, but also for improving cognitive development.

For this, young people created an elastic band that they called LudwigBand, which is placed on the wrists and legs, and which allows the vibrations of the instruments to be felt on the skin.

In other words, you can “hear” music through body vibrations.

This tool can also help deaf people learn to play instruments, such as drums.

It was the winning project Solve for tomorrow 2024 : this is the idea presented by the team Fakecomposed of Diego Aravena, Angelina Rodríguez and Agustín Bustamante, from the Juan Terrier Dailly Institute in the Maule region, and their professor Rogers Méndez, to combat misinformation.

Young people realized that fake news abounds around them, especially as artificial intelligence advances at a dizzying pace and is being misused for this purpose.

This is why They designed an application for mobile phones where the user can enter the link of a news item found on the Internet to check whether it is real or fake news.

“There are many studies from prestigious universities and institutions in our own country that tell us that more than 8 million people share information without knowing if the information is true or false, which is 42% of the Chilean population “, explains the team. The Third.

They also pointed out that there are groups in the population who are more likely to fall prey to fake news. They are motivated to be able to bring “that grain of sand” to society, not only in Chile, but in the rest of the world.

Once the prize is awarded, one of the judges, Journalist Soledad Onetto rushed to hug the students.

“They (young people) think about a lot of things that we don’t see. I like that they think about deaf people, or the problem of fake news, but also what happens to hummingbirds when the Valparaíso region burns. “They have the antenna superimposed everywhere”, underlines the presenter of Channel 13 has The Third.

For his part, Barbarita Lara, a prominent Chilean researcher, says that “seeing young people so engaged in social issues fills me with pride. For me, it is essential that young people continue to be encouraged and filled with meaning. »

“These projects inspire this cultural transformation that we must promote in Chile,” says Pelayo Covarrubias, president of Fundación País Digital. “Showing their ideas allows us to inspire other students to follow the same line. »

According to Covarrubias, this competition, which has existed for ten years, has allowed different students not only to find direction for their professional careers, but also to realize their ideas in concrete projects.

“What we have seen over these ten years is that all those who have followed this program over time have changed their lives and have been able to project themselves into different companies, in different forms of work, in a different way than they probably would have had they not participated in these projects.