—, The five-year journey from a science fair to a patent started with this word!
Encouraged by my parents, I have built up my vocabulary since kindergarten by learning a few new words daily. On a snowy winter day in 2018, I read “Tom wanted a ergonomic bean bag for his playroom” in a children’s book. The word “ergonomic” seemed complicated but also sounded funny, I immediately guessed it had something to do with comic without looking it up and put it as a new word of the day, that guess seemed to be pretty logical and I was quite confident about it.
Weeks later, my piano teacher said “Cary, think about the most ergonomic way to position yourself when playing piano”. What? How can I comically practice classic pieces? This time, I finally learned the true meaning of “ergonomic.” Fast-forward two months, and it was time to think about the annual school science fair. I started jotting down the ideas on a piece of paper- slime, lava, instant ice. As I quickly erased those after deciding to do something more unique, the rubbery shavings filled up my desk,k and became quite sticky and messy. Suddenly, that strange word from the book came back—how about designing an ergonomic mini vacuum to clean up my workspace?
The best part was that when I brought the basic prototype to school, some kids offered to buy it from me for as much as $80!
