Young talent competitionNational winner of 'Jugend forscht 2019' chosen
Germany's best young researchers in the 54th national 'Jugend forscht' competition have been chosen. Artificial intelligence (AI) is playing an increasingly important role in the young talents' projects. The winners from the specialist areas and the special prize winners in a picture gallery.
National victory 2019 in the field of physics for Nils Wagner (20):
Enormous distances can be achieved with a Frisbee, the current world record is over 300 meters. The reason for this is the rotation of the flying object: it plays a decisive role in stabilizing the flight. Nils Wagner devoted his work to a similar throwing device: the "X-Zylo" is a thin-walled hollow cylinder that is thrown like a football and can fly in an astonishingly straight line. In order to understand this in detail, the young researcher wrote a computer program that can simulate the trajectory of the X-Zylo. He then checked the results on the basis of tests with a self-built, catapult-like launching device. The result: the calculated and actual trajectories were close to each other, even though the software did not yet take into account all the effects that are relevant for the flight.