Ruminations

Blog dedicated primarily to randomly selected news items; comments reflecting personal perceptions

Monday, January 26, 2009

Luminous Mind

It's never too early for a creatively introspective young mind to begin the journey toward finding his place in the world of enterprise, experiment and invention. Certainly that is precisely how Charlie Sobcov, all of thirteen years of age, appears to feel. He is in elementary school, but not for long. He is young, but that too will change.

He already has somewhat of an extraordinary mind and if early signs of mature expression designate him for a lifetime of scientific endeavour and creative ability, the world will surely gain much by his presence. It's clear that he has the ability to think deeply and to reach certain conclusions leading to action and credible results.

The knowledge that hundreds of millions of birds die annually simply by attempting inadvertently to fly through transparent panes of glass installed in windows all over the world - in modest houses and monumental skyscrapers alike, has moved him by the biological tragedy that this bird-slaughter represents.

Inspiring him as a nascent scientist, to stimulate his mind for a solution to the feathery carnage. His Grade 8 science fair project at the Turnbull Learning Centre in Ottawa has nudged him toward putting his thoughts into action, and in the process encouraging bird lovers to make use of his brainchild and report back results.

Something to warn birds that they must veer away from crashing their tender bodies into the cold, hard glass surface that would take life from them was his goal. And the solution appeared to him: a warning geared specifically to the avian community's vision sensitive to a light spectrum the human eye is incapable of distinguishing.

The resulting stylized bird shape fashioned from a flexible, electrostatic vinyl upon which he brushed a specialized UV-reflective paint, invisible to the human eye, but posing a warning to birdlife, is to be affixed to windows in this living experiment to save the lives of countless birds on this planet.

"It looks invisible to us, but to birds it's like a big stop sign in the middle of the window", explained Charlie. "I painted it on a plastic that clings to windows." He put out a call to local birders, and the response was gratifying, sufficient to keep him busy supplying the bird-visible window decals to those eager to prove its efficacy.

He now awaits the results to pour in from his many volunteer experimenters helpfully using his hand-shaped and painted decals, to enable him to complete his science project and present the proof of his very particular pudding. Kudos, Charlie Sobcov.

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