"I did think of it all on my own."

Jack Andraka, age 15. Watch him get the $75,000 Intel prize...



... and don't click off before you get to the part where he explains — with brilliant clarity — what he invented. And read the article. I love the stuff about his parents:

When he was in grade school, his father, a civil engineer, bought him and his older brother a plastic model river with running water. The boys would throw all kinds of foam boats and objects down the river and see which ones would drown and how different objects would impede the flow. His parents, he says, never really answered any of the questions they had. Go figure it out for yourself, they would say. “I got really into the scientific method of developing a hypothesis and testing it and getting a result and going back to do it again.”

Do you have the nerve to treat your kids like that? Figure it out for yourself!

I love that kid... and his parents (who follow a child-rearing approach that my parents used).