Where Spielberg meets Einstein: 15-year-old GSIS student makes it to finals of the Breakthrough Junior Challenge – the winner for the global science video competition gets US$400,000
- Adora Yin’s video, The Science Behind Taking a Photo, breaks down the technology that allows people to take high quality photos on their smartphones
- Previously, she had won an award at City University of Hong Kong’s Science Video Competition for making a video about the biology of human eyes
A self-described overachiever, 15-year-old science lover and German Swiss International School (GSIS) student Adora Yin manages to balance school life and two serious hobbies – tennis and video creation – whilst maintaining a healthy social life.
For her efforts, she has made it to the final 15 out of thousands of applicants in the Breakthrough Junior Challenge, a global contest that requires young STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) enthusiasts to create videos that explain complex scientific concepts in creative and informative ways. Think: Steven Spielberg meets Albert Einstein.
Yin’s video, The Science Behind Taking a Photo, breaks down the vast engineering effort behind the technology that allows people to take high-quality photos in a fraction of a second on their mobile phones – something that many of us have come to take for granted.
“I’ve grown up with smartphones with cameras and I’ve always loved photography, and one day I actually took a step back to think about how photos could be taken so quickly and precisely,” says Yin, who is in her final year of IGCSE and will begin her IB studies next year.
“So then I started researching and found that the scientific principles behind this seemingly super-simple process was actually so much more complicated than I could ever imagine. I felt that it was almost underappreciated, so that gave me the idea to create a video to shed light on it and spread scientific knowledge in an interesting way.”
In just two minutes, Yin explains the physics, chemistry and engineering that goes into this culture-shifting technology, detailing a smartphone’s lens, image sensors, computer chips and algorithms, as well as the multiple complex scientific processes that take place in less than a second to create a photo. The video features Yin talking as well as 2D and 3D animations, and various eye-catching graphics and special effects which make the video highly engaging from beginning to end.
