This brilliant 13-year-old figured out how to make clean energy using a device that costs $5

Grand prize winner
Maanasa Mendu
Andy King/Discovery Education

Maanasa Mendu thinks she’s cracked the code on how to make wind
and solar energy affordable. 

On Tuesday, Mendu, a 13-year-old from Ohio, won
the grand prize in the Discovery Education 3M Young
Scientist Challenge for her work in creating a cost-effective
“solar leaves” design to create energy. In addition to
winning the title of “America’s Top Young
Scientist,” she gets $25,000 for her achievement.

The leaves, designed to help developing areas in need of cheaper
power sources, cost roughly $5 to make.

Over the past three months, Mendu and nine other finalists
worked on their projects alongside a mentor provided by
3M. 

Mendu was inspired to come up with a cheaper way to produce
energy after visiting India, where she saw many people who lacked
access to affordable clean water and electricity.
Originally, her intent was to harness only wind energy.

Here’s what the product looked like when Mendu entered
the competition:

Maanasa Mendu via YouTube

But along the way, Mendu, with the help of her 3M
mentor Margauz Mitera, shifted to a different kind of energy
collection. Drawing inspiration from how plants function, she
decided to focus on creating her “solar leaves” that harnessed
vibrational
energy.

Here’s how it works: her “leaves” can pick up energy from
precipitation, wind, and even the sun using a solar cell and
piezoelectric
material (the part of the leaf that picks up on the vibrations).
These are then transformed into usable energy. 

Here’s what the finished product looked like:

Courtesy 3M

Now that the competition is over, Mendu said she wants to develop
the prototype further and conduct more tests so that one day she
can make it available commercially. 

The top four winners in the 2016 Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge. L to R: Amelia Day; Rohan Wagh; Maanasa Mendu (Grand Prize Winner); and Kaien Yang.
Andy King/Discovery Education